Indian banks have disclosed wilful defaults of over Rs 111,738 crore, involving 9,339 borrowers. This means that these people are capable of paying but refuse to do so.

State-owned banks have reported wilful defaults of Rs 93,357 crore, involving 7,564 borrowers as of September 2017, as per the data with Credit Information Bureau of India Limited (CIBIL), reported by The Indian Express. This is a 340% surge in less than five years as total wilful defaults were Rs 25,410 crore in 2013.

Borrowers who have disposed of or removed movable fixed assets or immovable property given for the purpose of securing a term loan are also wilful defaulters. “Most of these cases are fund diversion by promoters using the companies promoted by them,” banking sources said, as reported by The Indian Express.

Which banks are involved in this?

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is yet to publish the list of wilful defaulters. In 2017, RBI told the Supreme Court that they were not willing to make the names of those defaulters public who had more than Rs 500 crore debt to public sector banks.

In the latest data from CIBIL, it was found that Punjab National Bank, which is already reeling under a Rs 11,400 crore fraud by Nirav Modi has wilful defaulters of Rs 12,574crore involving 1,018 borrowers as of December 2017.

The major defaulters named by PNB are Winsome Diamond (Rs 899 crore), Nafed (Rs 224 crore) and Apple Industries (Rs 248 crore).

The State Bank of India leads the list with wilful defaults of Rs 27,716 crore by 1,665 borrowers. Major wilful defaulters of SBI include Kingfisher Airlines (Rs 1,286 crore), Calyx Chemicals (Rs 327 crore), J B Diamond (Rs 208 crore), Spanco Rs 347 crore), Zenith Birla (Rs 139 crore), Shreem Corp (Rs 283 crore), Zoom Developers (Rs 378 crore), First Leasing (Rs 403 crore) and GET Engineering (Rs 406 crore), according to the CIBIL data.

Other banks who are in the same list of wilful defaulters are IDBI bank with 83 wilful defaulters and Bank of India with 314 defaulters.

List made public by CIBIL

RBI has allowed CIBIL to make the names of those borrowers against whom banks have filed suits for recovery of loans, public.

In 2017, the central bank told the Supreme Court that “the disclosure might involve the statutory, contractual and fiduciary rights of the defaulters” and argued that the grant of loans was covered by various statutes and contractual obligations. “Some of the banks and companies were against disclosing the names,” said an official source.

You can read The Indian Express’ original report here.