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How Rs 114-billion PNB fraud went undetected for seven long years

The Reserve Bank issued reminder after Bangladesh heist

PNB fraud, nirav modi, pnb scam
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Illustration: Binay Sinha

Jeanette Rodrigues & Bhuma Shrivastava | Bloomberg
The story of how India’s biggest bank fraud went undetected for seven years includes an $81 million cyber-heist in neighbouring Bangladesh, penny-pinching lenders and a series of missed opportunities.
 
In 2016, after revelations that hackers had infiltrated the Bangladeshi central bank’s computer systems to siphon off money, its counterpart in India sensed a danger to its own banking system. The Reserve Bank of India reminded all the country’s lenders to ensure their computer networks were properly integrated with Swift, the global system used to transmit payment instructions in the Bangladesh theft.
 
Unknown to the RBI at the time,