Country’s largest lender the State Bank of India said, there is no delay in filing complaints against ABG Shipyard, a Gujarat-based company, which allegedly siphoned off bank loans and currently facing liquidation through an insolvency process at the National Company Law Tribunal. “At no point in time, there was any effort to delay the process,” SBI said in a release on Sunday evening.

“The lender’s forum diligently follows through with CBI in all such cases.” The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) earlier on Saturday booked ABG Shipyard Ltd and its then chairman and managing director Rishi Kamlesh Agarwal for defrauding a consortium of lenders over Rs 22,842 crore exposure. Although, ICICI Bank was the lead lender in the consortium and IDBI Bank was the second lead, it was preferred that SBI being the largest PSB lender, lodges the complaint with CBI, the banking behemoth said.

The loan account turned into a non-performing asset nearly a decade ago as attempts to recast it had failed under Corporate Debt Restructuring (CDR) – once a dedicated window to recover sticky loans.

The first complaint was filed with CBI in Nov 2019. There was a continuous engagement between CBI and Banks and further information was getting exchanged. A second complaint was in December, 2020 following a slew of joint lenders’ meetings. Later, a forensic audit report underscored misappropriation of funds prompting lenders to declare it a “fraud account”.