ABG account became NPA in UPA regime: Sitharaman

New Delhi, February 14

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman replied to the Opposition’s criticism that the Government took a long time to file the first fraud complaint in the Rs 22,483-crore loan default by a Gujarat-based company by stating that the time taken was less than normal and that ABG Shipyard’s account had became a non-performing asset (NPA) under the Congress-led UPA regime.

“I am sitting in RBI premises, so I don’t want to talk too much about politics, but I am sorry for the kind of noise coming from the biggest ‘ghotala’ in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s time. Not at all. This was a loan given well prior to 2013 and it had become even an NPA by 2013. So people dig holes into which they themselves fall,” said Sitharaman in Mumbai after delivering the customary post-Budget address to the RBI Board.

“They made the noise, not realising that it was the UPA regime and we have taken less time to detect it and take actionhellip;So action is happening here like the way it happened for every other major bank defaults,” she added.

In the ABG Shipyard case, the banks have taken less than the average time taken to detect such frauds, she said. “Normally, it takes I said 56 months and of late, it is taking far less time to detect such things,” observed the Minister.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) recently booked many of the company’s senior executives for defrauding as many as 28 banks of Rs 22,483 crores.

The Congress has accused the Government of complicity and connivance in “India’s biggest bank fraud ndash; Rs 22,842 crore being bigger than the Rs 14,000-crore PNB scam by Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi”.

The State Bank of India (SBI) in a statement on Sunday had said the loans given to ABG Shipyard became NPA on November 30, 2013, and the debt was restructured in March 2014.

As the restructuring failed, the account was classified as NPA in July 2016 with “backdated effect” from November 30, 2013. Lenders appointed Eamp;Y as the forensic auditor in April 2018, which submitted its report in 2019.

In November 2019, the first complaint was filed with the CBI and a comprehensive second complaint was filed in December 2020. The account is presently undergoing liquidation under an NCLT driven process, said SBI which had lent nearly Rs 3,000 crore to ABG Shipyard.