India’s top 50 wilful defaulters owed Rs 87,295 crore to banks as of 31 March 2023, the Finance Ministry said.

Topping the list is Gitanjali Gems, owned by fugitive diamond billionaire Nirav Modi’s uncle Mehul Choksi. The company owed Rs 8,738 crore to banks, accounting for more than 10% of the outstanding dues.

The others in the hierarchical order include Era Infra Engineering Limited with Rs 5,750 crore of outstanding dues, REI Agro Limited with Rs 5,148 crore, ABG Shipyard Limited with Rs 4,774 crore and Concast Steel and Power Limited with Rs 3,911 crore.

The list includes Rotomac Global Private Limited with default of Rs 2,894 crore, Winsome Diamonds and Jewellery Limited with Rs 2,846 crore, Frost International Limited with Rs 2,518 crore, Shri Lakshmi Cotsyn Limited with Rs 2,180 crore and Zoom Developers Private Limited with Rs 2,066 crore.

The top 10 wilful defaulters owed Rs 40,825 crore to scheduled commercial banks, Minister of State for Finance Bhagwat Karad said in a written reply in Rajya Sabha.

Scheduled commercial banks have written off an aggregate amount of Rs 10,57,326 crore during the last five financial years as per provisional data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for FY 2022-23, he said.

In a separate reply, Karad said 66,069 frauds were reported in 2022-23 causing a loss of Rs 85.25 crore. In the previous year, 65,893 frauds were reported with financial implication of Rs 115.36 crore.

Responding to another query posed by MP Randeep Singh Surjewala about people booked under the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act (FEOA) of 2018, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary said that the Enforcement Directorate has filed applications against 19 persons, of which only 10 persons have been declared FEOs by competent courts.

As on date, assets amounting to Rs 15,113.02 crore have been confiscated in 19 cases involving fugitive economic offenders such as Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi and have been returned to public sector banks. 

“Furthermore, assets amounting to Rs 873.75 crore have also been confiscated under FEOA in respect of the said FEOs,” Chaudhary said. 

The names of 10 persons who have been declared as fugitive economic offenders (FEOs) include Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi, Nitin Jayantilal Sandesara, Chetan Jayantilal Sandesara, Dipti Chetan Jayantilal Sandesara, Hitesh Kumar Narendrabhai Patel, Junaid Iqbal Memon, Hajra Iqbal Memon, Asif Iqbal Memon and Ramachandran Vishwanathan.

The amount of fraud involved in these cases is more than Rs 40,000 crore.

Four of these ten fugitive economic offenders have been deported or extradited to India by Enforcement Directorate so far.