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Journalism of Courage
Central Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) K V Chowdary said the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) did not audit the Punjab National Bank (PNB) branch that sanctioned the loan defaulted by jeweller Nirav Modi and Gitanjali Gems promoter Mehul Choksi. His comments comes days after the finance minister Arun Jaitely remark that regulators, auditors decide the rules of the game and have to have a third eye which is to be perpetually open.
Chowdary clarified that RBI did not conduct the audit at PNB since it had switched over from a periodic audit to a “risk-based” audit which is conducted when there is a financial risk involved. The anti-corruption watchdog also stressed on the need to put a more robust auditing system to prevent such large scale frauds at the banks. The bank fraud perpetrated at the Mumbai branch of PNB remain undetected despite Modi availing different credit facilities between 2013 and 2017.
While the CBI had the regulatory responsibility for the banking sector but any lack of integrity would be looked at by the Central Vigilance Commission. “To determine risk, they must have some parameters. Based on that they would have done that (auditing). (But) there was no apparent audit by the RBI during this period (of fraud),” Chowdary said.
Chowdary pointed out that the RBI issues general guidelines as a regulator and also when foreign exchange is involved. “They are not going to see from branch to branch and bank to bank what they are supposed to do,” he said.
It was primarily the responsibility of the banks to ensure that their business was conducted in a proper and ethical way, he added. He said when something goes wrong, “one cannot blame everybody”. “There is a systemic issue (here). They (RBI) have decided instead of every year or every once in two, three or four years, they will do it (risk-based auditing).
“It is a good policy. But how they determine the risk parameters… and why this (fraud) did not come up are matters of detail,” Chowdary said. On a bank’s role in checking frauds, Chowdary said there are “no timelines” when it comes to deeper decision making processes.
“There should be defined timelines. The preventive vigilance mechanism has to be strengthened. The guidelines and operating procedures have to be strengthened. It has to be ensured that they are followed,” he said. CBI is among various agencies looking into the over Rs 13,000-crore fraud allegedly committed by Modi and Choksi.
