The top 50 wilful defaulters owe Rs 87,295 crore to banks and financial institutions. These defaulters include Mehul Choksi’s Gitanjali Gems, Rishi Agarwal’s ABG Shipyard, REI Agro, and Era Infra Engineering. Of these wilful defaulters, top 10 owe Rs 40,825 crore to scheduled commercial banks, Minister of State for Finance Dr Bhagwat Karad said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha. Mehul Choksi’s Gitanjali Gems is the biggest wilful defaulter as it owes Rs 8,738 crore to banks. It is followed by Era Infra (Rs 5,750 crore), REI Agro (Rs 5,148 crore), ABG Shipyard (Rs 4,774 crore), and Concast Steel and Power Limited (Rs 3,911 crore). Other wilful defaulters include Rotomac Global (Rs 2,894 crore), Winsome Diamonds and Jewellery (Rs 2,846 crore), Frost International (Rs 2,518 crore), Shri Lakshmi Cotsyn (Rs 2,180 crore), and Zoom Developers (Rs 2,066 crore).
Karad noted that the SCBs have written off an aggregrate amount of Rs 10,57,326 crore during the last five years. RBI’s circular titled Framework for Compromise Settlements and Technical Write-offs states that regulated entities may undertake compromise settlement or technical write-offs w.r.t accounts classified as fraud or wilful defaulter. The Framework for Compromise Settlements and Technical Write-offs prescribes a minimum cooling-off period of 12 months as a general prescription for normal cases of compromises settlement.
