ICICI Bank on Friday suspended 18 employees pending investigation, sources in the bank said, a day after an independent journalist accused it and two other private banks of money-laundering practices.
The suspension is pending the bank’s investigation into money laundering charges, sources in ICICI told PTI. The probe is expected to be completed in two weeks.
Country’s three largest private banks, including the ICICI Bank, were on Thursday accused of indulging in money-laundering both within and outside, with an online portal Cobrapost claiming that a sting operation conducted by it has revealed a scam.
Cobrapost had on Thursday played the contents of purported video recording of officials of private banks allegedly agreeing to receive unverified sums of cash and put them in their investment schemes and benami accounts in violation of anti-money-laundering laws.
Keywords: ICICI Bank money-laundering charges, Cobrapost sting, ICICI Bank staff suspension, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank
I applaud this proactive action by ICICI. At least they have the courage to take swift actions by their own employees instead of hiding behind lies and denials like most Indian companies and Indian politicians.
The RBI is stil not contemplating hefty fine that some of very BIG
name Banks has faced in the USA for money laundering
It is the strength of true journalism that revealed the truth. Now
it is the duty of the our police department to intiate strict
action urgently.
Suspending a few employees should not be the end of it and stringent action should also be taken against the v\bank by RBI, if the news is found to be correct.
It's not the employee who needs to be suspended it's their Compliance
Chief and CEO. Let them give the poor sales personnel with achievable
targets on liability and cross sell products. After making good profits
through Bank's nefarious policies they will be dumping these guys on the
pretext of non-compliance. RBI please wake up and fix the cause
perpetually.
What a surprise! We are forced to believe that these employees on their
own are doing such type of male practice without concern of their top
management? They are made to scapegoat.
Are these employees the scape goats? Isn't the higher management aware of such illegal anti-regulatory practices? Raises lot of disturbing questions on the ethics of financial industry in India. Chidambaram is hard pushing for rampant privatization and proliferation without understanding the implications of existing practices.
Its a very good start ... this is a bigfish I mean the banks
looting illegally. hope it does not go with another coverup from
the rich and corrupted top level citizens supporting these
activities
I also wish some one can step up to look the banks making
average citizen life difficult by asking them to keep minimum
balance and collecting hefty fees for various reasons from
people with difficult financial background
This action by the ICICI is just a drama.This foreign bank has been indulging in this nefarious act of money-laundering from day one of its inauguration in India. Otherwise how would it have reached a position to challenge the nation's number one bank, the State Bank of India within a span of about 20 years? Most of the customers of ICICI are the bigwigs amongst the exporters and importers of India with deflated and inflated bills of exchange, the country's top politicians and bureaucrats with their amassed ill-gotten wealth and their stooges. Most of the officers of ICICI are former officers of nationalised banks purchased with offer of one rank higher than that they had held and that they could draw their pension from their previous employer. The objective was to induce the former public sector officers to get their former high value customers switch to ICICI. I appeal to The Hindu to please call ICICI and HDFC as foreign banks and not just private banks.Refer RBI website.
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