A pointless apology?In 1992, Standard Chartered Bank painted itself the victim of a major fraud that caused it to lose a whopping Rs 1239.82 crore. Its crack security team flown in from UK then went around casting aspersions. In India, its allegations led to the summary liquidation of Bank of Karad and Metropolitan Cooperative Bank. The Bank of England also believed Stanchart's allegations and ordered the closure of Mount Banking Corporation, a small but well-known bank owned by two Indians - Suresh and Navin Shah. After a seven-year litigation, Justice Vinelott has now ruled that ``no evidence of complicity (of Mount Banking Corporation) has ever been discovered.'' Stanchart has now published an apology to the Shahs and made retribution through a `substantial donation' to a Charitable Trust belonging to them. The apology says that Stanchart had received information, which, ``later turned out to be wholly untrue, that Mount Banking Corporation may have played a part in disposing the fraudproceeds.'' But isn't it too little and too late? Moreover, Stanchart had a deal going with stockbroker Hiten Dalal to let him run their treasury for a fixed return. It has also had its monetary claims rejected by the Special Court in India. This shows how a big foreign bank can get several banks closed down. Incidentally, Stanchart has closed most of its own branches in London and the UK.Mind of the marketThe continuous fall in stock prices over the last 10 days has begun to unnerve investors and punters. Last week, the Sensex dropped 372 points and it has been a continuous fall of 525 points since the previous Thursday as investors began to unwind their huge forward positions. The market has delivered a neat slap to all those who claimed that the index would swing into another orbit after the BJP came back to power and that Indian equities were grossly undervalued. Clearly, nobody can dictate the course of the Sensex, neither big brokers nor institutional investors. Punters are so unnerved bythe crash that they now predict that prices will drift downwards until January when FIIs are back with new asset allocations and the Y2K bug has wrecked its havoc, if any. But then, the market has a mind of its own and nobody really knows what will happen today.It is all a power gameRemember how MSEB had cut off power supply to the Mittal's steel project at Dolvi when it failed to pay bills that ran into Rs 80 crore? Power supply was restored after the intervention of a politician, who negotiated staggered payment terms. The Mittals are apparently slipping up on payments again. The group's financial problems are so acute that even Tata Steel has filed a winding up petition against one of the group companies for non payment of bills. Yet the group continues to fly high. On one hand, it is still signing deals with TV magnate Rupert Murdoch. On the other, IDBI still lists Ispat Energy as one of the 17 which are likely to attain financial closure in the next few months.Congress andSoniaAfter its election debacle (it sent the lowest ever MPs to Parliament) the Congress's two internet websites also seem to have crashed. The one dedicated to Sonia Gandhi draws a complete blank. The official Congress Party site has a piffling one page on its so-called vision, but we did get a message, nearly 10 days after our query that the site is being reconstructed. Maybe the Party is simply smart enough to ensure that its pre-election bragging and miscalculation do not embarrass it before the world of net surfers.Disclosure timeUnlike other banks, SBI has so far avoided disclosing its NPAs in absolute numbers (as against a percentage of total lending). This year though, Chairman G G Vaidya has decided to abandon the coyness and reveal that the NPAs of the bank are a huge Rs 14, 262 crore for the period ended September 1999.Author's email: suchetadalal@yahoo.com
