The Enforcement Directorate and CBI on Wednesday carried out nationwide enquiries and arrests for alleged irregularities and violations in the banks in connection with demonetisation. The action of these agencies came after the Revenue and Income Tax department shared the details of malpractices and doubtful practices in banks in collusion with note exchange and black money rackets.
The ED launched an ‘enquiry of records’ operation in over 50 branches of 10 banks across the country to detect money laundering and hawala dealing instances through these channels. For its part, the CBI arrested a senior manager of Central Bank of India and two owners of a firm in Bengaluru for allegedly violating RBI guidelines on scrapping of `500 and `1,000 notes.
The agency had registered an FIR against senior manager and branch head of Central Bank of India's Basavanagudi branch S lakshimnarayana and Directors of Omkar Parimal Mandir -- S Gopal and Ashwin G Sunkur - on Tuesday and carried out searches at various places.
Officials said multiple teams of the ED swooped down on the branches of the banks, both private and public sector, along with banking auditors to "scrutinise" transaction records and account statements, armed with vital inputs gathered from financial snoop agencies.
They said ED teams have launched the operations at branches located in major cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chennai and others based on records of transaction of these branches
where the maximum amount of old notes have been deposited or huge cash has been deposited in bank accounts in one go or in a staggered fashion giving rise to suspicion of suspect deposits.
Officials said the sleuths and auditors are "looking at the banking transaction records post November 8" and instructions have been issued to these teams to ensure that regular operations and customer dealings are not affected due to this.
The ED had recently arrested two Axis Bank employees working at a branch in Delhi while probing a similar instance under PMlA. ED, last week, had also conducted searches at 40 locations across the country in order to check black money held with currency exchanges, hawala dealers and others.