India is clipping the wings of businessmen it considers a flight risk. Weeks after the country's largest bank fraud investigation began, lawmakers, bureaucrats and court officials began drafting tighter rules to prevent citizens fleeing abroad with unpaid dues. A Mumbai court last week ordered top executives of indebted Aircel Ltd., owned by Malaysian billionaire T Ananda Krishnan, from leaving India as the failed mobile-carrier slipped into bankruptcy. The same day, Parliament began considering a bill to confiscate the assets of so-called fugitive economic offenders, while officials have drawn up a no-fly list of 91 people from firms identified as wilful defaulters or those that refuse to repay loans despite having the means to do so.
The measures may assuage public anger at billionaires who have absconded overseas, leaving behind failed businesses and debts that have contributed to the Rs 13 lakh crore of bad loans on banks’ balance sheets. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who swept into office in 2014 on a pledge to weed out graft and black money, is clamping down on delinquent borrowers and corporate cheats as he seeks a second term at national elections next year and to contain political damage from the alleged PNB fraud of the tune of Rs 13,000 crore uncovered last month.

India is clipping the wings of businessmen it considers a flight risk. Weeks after the country's largest bank fraud investigation began, lawmakers, bureaucrats and court officials began drafting tighter rules to prevent citizens fleeing abroad with unpaid dues. A Mumbai court last week ordered top executives of indebted Aircel Ltd., owned by Malaysian billionaire T Ananda Krishnan, from leaving India as the failed mobile-carrier slipped into bankruptcy. The same day, Parliament began considering a bill to confiscate the assets of so-called fugitive economic offenders, while officials have drawn up a no-fly list of 91 people from firms identified as wilful defaulters or those that refuse to repay loans despite having the means to do so.
The measures may assuage public anger at billionaires who have absconded overseas, leaving behind failed businesses and debts that have contributed to the Rs 13 lakh crore of bad loans on banks’ balance sheets. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who swept into office in 2014 on a pledge to weed out graft and black money, is clamping down on delinquent borrowers and corporate cheats as he seeks a second term at national elections next year and to contain political damage from the alleged PNB fraud of the tune of Rs 13,000 crore uncovered last month.