{
 "no": 45,
 "id": "case-45",
 "sk": 20180214,
 "year": 2018,
 "date": "Mallya fled 2016. PNB scam broke Feb 2018.",
 "cat": "Public money",
 "sev": "amber",
 "title": "The fugitives who fled with public money",
 "stamp": "They fled. Little recovered.",
 "human": {
  "v": "State-owned banks and, through them, the taxpayer left holding thousands of crore",
  "est": false
 },
 "cost": {
  "v": "PNB fraud ~<b>₹13,000 to 14,500 cr</b>; 15 declared fugitive offenders owe banks ~<b>₹58,000 cr</b>, of which only ~<b>₹19,000 cr</b> recovered",
  "est": true
 },
 "what": "Diamond tycoons Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi allegedly defrauded state-owned Punjab National Bank of around ₹13,000 to 14,500 crore through fake Letters of Undertaking, the biggest banking fraud in Indian history, while liquor baron Vijay Mallya defaulted on over ₹9,000 crore owed by his airline. All of them left the country before or just as the cases broke.",
 "dodge": "Each high-profile accused slipped out of India on the government's watch, Mallya in 2016, and Nirav Modi in early 2018, weeks before the PNB fraud went public and days after he was photographed among industrialists at a Davos event with the Prime Minister. Years of assurances that they would be brought back have produced drawn-out extradition battles and only a fraction of the money recovered. The oversight failure that let them walk out of the country has answered to no one.",
 "ministers": [
  {
   "n": "Nirmala Sitharaman",
   "r": "Finance Minister (banking oversight)"
  },
  {
   "n": "Union Finance Ministry",
   "r": "Public-sector banks"
  }
 ],
 "pos": "The government points to the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act of 2018, ongoing extradition efforts, partial recoveries, and insists the defaulters remain liable.",
 "alleg": "The specific charges against the fugitives are <em>before the courts in India and abroad</em>. The accountability failure logged here is that they were able to flee at all, and that most of the public money is still unrecovered.",
 "alt": "A system that flags and stops large defaulters before they board a plane, genuinely fast extradition, and real recovery of public-bank money, rather than photo-ops and promises.",
 "sources": [
  {
   "label": "15 fugitive offenders owe banks ~₹58,000 cr",
   "url": "https://www.deccanherald.com/india/centre-says-15-fugitive-economic-offenders-including-vijay-mallya-nirav-modi-owe-rs-58000-cr-to-banks-3816219",
   "tier": 2,
   "archiveUrl": "http://web.archive.org/web/20251214162849/https://www.deccanherald.com/india/centre-says-15-fugitive-economic-offenders-including-vijay-mallya-nirav-modi-owe-rs-58000-cr-to-banks-3816219"
  },
  {
   "label": "'All coming back to face law', said FM",
   "url": "https://www.deccanherald.com/india/mallya-nirav-modi-mehul-choksi-all-coming-back-to-face-law-fm-sitharaman-963510.html",
   "tier": 2
  }
 ],
 "estimates": {
  "costInrCrore": 39000
 },
 "caseUrl": "https://whoisresponsible.xyz/case/case-45/"
}