PNB scandal was not a lone-wolf crime

Hong Kong

IT'S disingenuous to think that India's biggest banking fraud was just one bent officer in a bumbling state-run lender enriching an uncle-nephew pair of greedy diamond merchants. That's the spin Punjab National Bank is trying to put on the US$1.8 billion scam that went on for seven years.

According to the lender's version, PNB's former employee Gokulnath Shetty provided billionaire jeweller Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi with guarantees - known as letters of undertaking - so they could get loans from other Indian lenders' branches overseas.