KNOWBASE
What was promised. What happened.
A sourced record of India's biggest financial frauds and governance failures — from the first one on record after independence to the ones still in court today.
This total mixes CAG presumptive-loss estimates, CBI/ED alleged-fraud figures, and Ponzi-scheme estimates — measurements that aren't directly comparable, added here only to show scale. See how we count this.
* Compares alleged and recovered figures only for the cases where both exist on a like-for-like basis — see methodology.
The freshest scandals on record
Three worth your ten minutes
The Coal Block Allocation Scam ("Coalgate")
218 coal blocks handed out without competitive bidding. The CAG's own loss estimate swung from ₹10.67 lakh crore to ₹1.86 lakh crore before the Supreme Court cancelled most of the allocations outright.
The Adani Group Investigations
A US short-seller's report accused India's biggest infrastructure conglomerate of stock manipulation and fraud, wiping out $150 billion in market value overnight. Two years later, a separate and far more serious US federal indictment accused its chairman of a $250 million bribery scheme. Both threads have now closed — one with a regulatory clean chit, the other with criminal charges a judge dismissed while calling the government's own reasoning "concerning."
Byju's: From $22 Billion Edtech Giant to Insolvency
India's most valuable startup delayed its audited results for over a year, watched its auditor and three board members quit within days of each other, and is now fighting a BCCI-triggered insolvency case, a $1.2 billion US lender dispute over 'missing' funds, and a US court judgment against its founder.
However you want to look at it
All 275 cases live in one searchable database — this is just three ways into it.
Every case in the order it happened, decade by decade — including the gaps.
Ordered by public money implicated and the strength of the official finding.
Find a case by name, ministry, individual, or sector.
CAG reports and court records first. Disputed facts and pending trials are flagged, not smoothed over. Accused individuals are presumed innocent.
Read the full methodology →