Demonetisation a catalyst for Modi's friends and cronies to loot Indian banks: Rahul Gandhi

Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday launched a blistering attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, pinning the Punjab National Bank scam on him and said he is answerable to the nation as 90 per cent of the fraudulent transactions had taken place during his tenure.

“This is a 22,000 crore scam,” he said, nearly doubling the fraud amount of Rs 11,400 crore that was revealed by the PNB to the Security Exchange Board of India on Wednesday. The bank has since then accepted that the fraud amount could be higher but has not disclosed the exact figure.

Nirav Modi managedto take away Rs 22000 crore butPM is not able to tell us how he managed this scam, he added.

The scam of this magnitude cannot have been done without a high-level protection, Gandhi said and added that it must have been known by the people in government beforehand otherwise it is not possible.

PM will have to come forward and answer these questions, he added.

Linking the scam to PM Modi’s decision to demonetise Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes, he said that the scam had started on November 8, 2016.

“On that day, PMtook the entire nation’s money and put this into banks. Now, his friends and cronies have stolen that money from the banks,” the Congress president said.

On allegations against the UPA government, he said that this is done to divert the attention from the real issue.