New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday launched an “enquiry of records” operation at over 50 bank branches across the country to unearth money laundering and hawala dealing instances through these channels as part of its action to check financial crimes post demonetisation. The agency also arrested a chartered accountant (CA), third person to be arrested in connection with its money laundering probe of alleged illegal conversion of demonetised notes in connivance with Axis Bank officials of a Delhi branch.
According to sources, several teams of ED swooped early morning at over 50 branches of at least 10 banks, both in the 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.
Meanwhile, the CBI on Wednesday arrested a senior manager of Central Bank of India and two owners of a firm in Bengaluru for allegedly violating RBI guidelines on scraping of Rs 500 and Rs 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. The three were called for questioning at the CBI office in Bengaluru this morning and placed under arrest after they allegedly failed to answer many of the questions, sources said.
