'On Sunday, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested Yes Bank’s swashbuckling co-promoter Rana Kapoor, accusing him and his family of using shell companies to receive kickbacks from the bank’s corporate borrowers. On March 5, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had used its powers to supersede the bank’s board and impose restrictions on its operations. The bank’s depositors cannot withdraw more than ₹50,000 for the next four weeks at least. Predictably, the State Bank of India (SBI) has emerged as Yes Bank’s knight in shining armour.
'Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman confirmed on Friday that the troubled Yes Bank had had loan exposure to “very stressed” companies associated with Anil Ambani and Subhash Chandra, two industrialists considered close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A stack of bad loans had reduced to almost zero the net worth of Yes Bank, whose board was superseded by the RBI on Thursday night...'
'Vadodara Smart City Development Company, a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) of the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC), withdrew Rs 265 crore from Yes Bank a day before the Reserve Bank imposed a moratorium, an official said on Friday. On Thursday, the RBI restricted withdrawals from Yes Bank to Rs 50,000 per depositor due to the private lender's precarious financial situation...'
'The crisis at capital-starved Yes Bank deepened on Thursday night after the Narendra Modi government, in cooperation with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), imposed restrictions on withdrawals at the private sector lender. The RBI has also superseded the institution’s board of directors for a period of 30 days and has appointed Prashant Kumar, former CFO of State Bank of India as its administrator. In its assessment of the situation at Yes Bank, the central bank has been blunt.
'When anonymous billionaires use electoral bonds to funnel thousands of crores into the coffers of India’s political parties, the Indian taxpayer pays the banking fees, commissions, printing costs and associated charges, documents reviewed by HuffPost India establish. Neither the secretive billionaire donor, nor the recipient political party, pay a paisa to maintain the secure infrastructure of banking channels, accounts and printing presses that facilitate political donations.
'The State Bank of India (SBI) resorted to misinformation, and in some cases falsehood, in its responses to Right to Information (RTI) inquiries on the controversial electoral bonds scheme, even as it regularly funnelled information on the scheme to the Finance Ministry, documents reviewed by HuffPost India establish.
'In an affidavit submitted to the Delhi High Court, the Citizens Whistle Blower Forum stated that Yes Bank, a private-sector lender founded by Rana Kapoor, advanced “dubious” loans amounting to at least Rs 5,698 crore to various companies of the Indiabulls group and others owned by its founder and promoter, Sameer Gehlaut. Publicly available documents reveal that many of these loans were issued after the respective companies had reported a negative net worth.
'The Narendra Modi government on Tuesday appointed former finance ministry official Shaktikanta Das as governor of the Reserve Bank of India, a day after former central bank boss Urjit Patel resigned abruptly. Das, a former finance secretary and current member of the 15th finance commission, shot into the public spotlight in late 2016 when he became the bureaucratic face of demonetisation in the weeks following the note-ban decision... In February 2017, he gave a speech that predicted that the positive effects of demonetisation would be felt from April 2017.
'On Tuesday, the Union government appointed S Gurumurthy as part-time, non-official director on the Central Board of the Reserve Bank of India. Gurumurthy is co-convener of the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch, an economic pressure group affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh – the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s ideological parent – but has few other credentials that would call for association with the country’s central bank.
'A district cooperative bank, which has Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah as a director, netted the highest deposits among such banks of old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes that were abruptly demonetised on November 8, 2016, according to RTI replies received by a Mumbai activist. The Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank (ADCB) secured deposits of Rs 745.59 crore of the spiked notes – in just five days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the demonetisation announcement.
