After BoB, now Oriental Bank of Commerce involved in black money transfer

P S Jayakumar, former Citibank executive, on October 12 took over as the managing director and chief executive officer of Bank of Baroda at a time when the public sector bank is struggling for an image-makeover as CBI probes into the suspected Rs 6,100 crore black money foreign exchange transfer case. Emails and text messages sent to Kotak Mahindra Bank and Yes Bank did not elicit any response.

Aggarwal, who has now emerged as one of the main operators in the illegal money laundering racket, revealed the involvement of several other people during interrogation.

The agency is likely to arrest more middlemen and bank officials as 44 more firms involved in the dubious transactions are under the scanner. Jain, a resident of Ghaziabad, was making illegal fund transfers to Hong Kong on the basis of forged import documents.

The case was unearthed after the agency got leads from an accused in the Bank of Baroda money laundering case, where suspicious remittances of an estimated ‘6,000 crore have come to light recently and which is being probed by multiple agencies, including the CBI, SFIO, the Income Tax department and the ED. The fraud through BoB and HDFC Bank began in January 2014, initial investigations have revealed.

In its FIR, the CBI has alleged that “59 current account holders and unknown bank officials conspired to send overseas remittances, mostly to Hong Kong, of foreign exchange worth approximately Rs6,100 crore in illegal and irregular manner in violation of established banking norms under the garb of payments towards suspected non-existent imports”. It admitted that the Ashok Vihar branch in New Delhi did not follow Foreign Exchange Management Act rules.

“He deposited unaccounted cash in Indian banks and transferred the amounts to his companies’ accounts with a Hong Kong branch of HSBC Bank”, he said. However, it has maintained that it did not face any financial loss because of these dubious transactions.

This development comes after the swoop down on Bank of Baroda in the past few days where investigations show that the Ashok Vihar Branch was involved in illegal remittances to the tune of over Rs 6000 cr.

News agency Press Trust of India earlier on Thursday reported that the Serious Fraud Investigation Office, a multi-disciplinary organization under the ministry of corporate affairs to tackle white-collar crimes and fraud, has also initiated a probe into the money laundering case.