The fraud perpetrated by diamantaire Nirav Modi appears to be the mother of all scams. India’s second largest state-owned bank has been cheated of nearly a couple of billion dollars in credit availed illegally with the connivance of some key officials. The arguments over when the scam started and when it was detected, now raging between the BJP and the Congress, are essentially diversionary. The truth is such a scam by a top diamond merchant couldn’t have taken place without the knowledge of politicians. Many, regardless of party affiliation, have been known to associate themselves with events in the rise and rise of Nirav Modi. As facts keep tumbling out, so too do skeletons. It’s clear from the evidence unearthed so far that the nation was cheated of a huge chunk of public money.
The FIRs over fraud relate to the most recent years, in which the chief villain from inside the system, a deputy general manager of PNB, was creating and emailing fraudulent Letters of Undertaking (LoUs) swiftly, clearly because he was due to retire. The brazenness with which he cheated the bank by sharing its highest security-level passwords shows how hopeless banks are in ferreting out even such huge transactions in time to foil large-scale frauds. The least we can expect at this time is that all the facts be laid before the public and in Parliament. It’s too late to try and fix which political entity was more guilty in encouraging this daring diamantaire. The impetus should first be on efforts to recover as much of the loot as possible. That much is owed to the nation.
