Nagpur: Abhijeet Group chief Manoj Jayaswal, whose loans run up to Rs12,500 crore, has been declared a wilful defaulter by Bank of India (BoI). BoI’s asset recovery branch at Ranchi, Jharkhand, issued a notice declaring both Jayaswal and his son Abhishek as wilful defaulters for a Rs 164 crore loan granted to Abhijeet Infrastructure Limited — one of the 75 companies in which the duo were directors. Jayaswal is now understood to have relocated to Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, running a ferro manganese business. Sources say he has wound up from Nagpur entirely.Jayaswal’s Abhijeet Group was granted over Rs22,000 crore loans by a consortium of banks of which Rs12,500 crore was disbursed, said a source in one of the lending banks. The group was also one of the biggest beneficiaries of the controversial coal allocation scheme of the UPA regime.A bank has to follow an elaborate procedure for giving the borrower such a tag. According to RBI guidelines, it can happen when the repayment was not done even when the borrower had the capacity to repay. It can also be done if funds are diverted, and the money cannot be traced in the form of other assets. A quick search on BoI records available in the public domain shows Jayaswal was declared a wilful defaulter for two other loans in the recent past. It was for combined Rs600 crore loans granted to Abhijeet Integrated Steel Limited and Corporate Ispat Limited.Jayaswal, was the second businessman after Gautam Adani to buy a private jet, floated a series of companies. The jet has now been grounded after the company could not pay for the maintenance required to meet the DGCA norms.In Jharkhand, where the BoI branch declared him a wilful defaulter, Abhijeet Group had plans to build a power plant. It was also allocated coal blocks in the state on the basis of which it planned to enter the power sector in the state. It set up a power plant even in Nagpur for exclusively supplying electricity to the Mihan-SEZ, but the plans did not work out, ending in a dispute between Abhijeet Group and the state govt.
