Punjab National Bank posts near $2 billion quarterly loss

(Reuters) - Punjab National Bank reported on Tuesday a $1.98 billion fourth-quarter net loss, the worst ever by an Indian lender, after being hit by a massive fraud.

The loss for the three months to March 31 came in at 134.17 billion rupees compared with a net profit of 2.62 billion rupees a year ago, the fourth-biggest Indian lender by assets said in a statement.

Shares in PNB fell 6 percent after the results.

For the March quarter, the bank saw its total provisions more than triple from a year earlier to 203.53 billion rupees. Of that 71.78 billion rupees were due to the fraud, the bank said.

In what has been dubbed as the biggest fraud in India's banking history, PNB in February disclosed two jeweller groups had defrauded it of more than $2 billion, raising credit overseas with fake guarantees issued by rogue PNB staff.

Police on Monday charged 22 people, including a former head of PNB and two of its current executive directors. A source familiar with the matter said more people are likely to be charged later this week.

Gross bad loans as a percentage of total loans jumped to 18.38 percent at end-March from 12.11 percent three months earlier and 12.53 percent a year ago.

As of Monday, the stock had tumbled about 44 percent since the fraud came to light, and is the worst performer among all Indian bank stocks this year.

($1 = 67.8550 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Vishal Sridhar in Bengaluru; Editing by Murali Anantharaman and Edwina Gibbs)