Media Eye News Bureau: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley recently said the state will chase down cheaters to the end. Jaitley further questioned as to why the bank's internal and external auditors could not detect the fraud which had been going on for an apparent 7 years.
Jaitley asserted, “It is incumbent on us as a state, till the last legitimate capacity of the state, to chase these people (fraudsters) to the last possible conclusion to make sure the country is not cheated.”
He added, “When authority is given to the managements you are expected to utilise that authority effectively and in a right manner. Therefore the question for the management itself is were they found lacking? And on the face of it the answer seems yes they were.” He elaborated that the lenders were ‘unable to check who amongst them were delinquent.’
He said, “And also there is an important challenge where the supervisory agencies are now to introspect as what are the additional mechanisms they have to put in place to ensure that stray cases don't become a pattern again. And stray cases are nipped in the bud and an example be made out of people that these bad examples itself are never to be repeated. It's a direct cost and it has an indirect cost that it impinges on development, which impinges on the lending capacity of banks as an institution and therefore impinges upon developmental finance.”
