Cobrapost Sting: ICICI Bank suspends 18 in money-laundering probe

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Reuters: Mumbai, Mar 16 2013, 01:04 IST

ICICI Bank Ltd, India's No. 2 lender, has suspended 18 employees pending an inquiry into suspected money laundering, the bank said in a statement on Saturday.

The move comes after a report by an independent journalist who said on Thursday he had video footage of some branch employees of ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank Ltd and Axis Bank Ltd suggesting to an undercover reporter methods of laundering money.

HDFC Bank said it would appoint audit firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Pvt Ltd to carry out an independent forensic inquiry.

The bank also appointed Amarchand & Mangaldas & Suresh A Shroff & Co to examine whether there had been any breaches of the bank's code of conduct.

Axis Bank said an internal inquiry was already under way.

India's finance ministry and central bank are also investigating allegations of money laundering at the top private sector lenders.

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Reader's Comments (2)| Post a Comment

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Satish | 16-Mar-2013Reply | Forward

Most of these people work under lot of pressure in achieving targets. When such assurances are given, there will be surely instructions and support from Superiors for malpractices. They should be grilled first.

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Vijay Kumar H Savla | 16-Mar-2013Reply | Forward

In these market conditions and when there is global slowdown, the effect of the same is transformed to banking sector. There is heavy cross-selling and other pressure from the top managements. Which leads to mis-selling and break-up of laid laws. The employees in the middle level management is over pressuring to lower cadre for mis-selling and providing approvals for the same. I would inform the banks to concentrate in core banking not being as an agent for selling insurance... and looting the people..