Business News
Axis Bank Says Has Sold Transactions Guaranteed By Punjab National Bank
Axis Bank shares had closed at Rs. 543.95 on Wednesday while the scrip opened at Rs. 534.55 on Thursday
Mumbai: Axis Bank said on Thursday that it had dealt in transactions that had been guaranteed with letters of undertaking from Punjab National Bank, but it had since sold those transactions. Axis Bank shares trade almost flat on Thursday at Rs. 546 on BSE, 0.46% higher than the previous session’s closing. The shares had closed at Rs. 543.95 on Wednesday while the scrip opened at Rs. 534.55 on Thursday. The shares had hit a high of Rs.554.3 and a low of Rs. 531.
PNB, India’s second-largest state-run lender with assets of $120 billion, said in a filing on Wednesday that it had detected fraudulent transactions worth $1.77 billion at a single Mumbai branch. Shares in PNB, which fell 10 percent on Wednesday, were down more than 5 percent in early trading on Thursday.
The fraud amounts to the tune of $1.77 billion in which the billionaire jeweller Nirav Modi allegedly acquired fraudulent letters of undertaking (LoU) from one of its branches for overseas credit.
Last week, PNB had lodged an FIR with the CBI stating that fraudulent LoUs worth Rs. 280.7 crore were first issued on January 16. At the time, PNB had said it was digging into records to examine the magnitude of the fraud.
This could be the biggest banking fraud in India as its quantum was bigger than an estimated 9,000 crore scam at erstwhile Satyam computers. In 2015, Bank of Baroda — another public sector bank — had brought to light a scam in which two Delhi-based businessmen cheated it of Rs. 6,000 crore (slightly less than $1 billion at that time).
