New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate 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, the third person to be arrested in connection with its money laundering probe into alleged illegal conversion of demonetised notes in connivance with Axis Bank officials of a Delhi branch.
Sources said several teams of ED swooped down early morning on over 50 branches of at least 10 banks, both in the private and public sector, along with banking auditors to “scrutinise” records and statements, armed with vital inputs from snoop agencies. They said ED teams have launched the operations in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chennai and other cities 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 one go, giving rise to suspicion of suspect deposits.
Investigation team told to not disturb banking
Sources 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 agency had recently arrested two Axis Bank employees working at a branch in Delhi while probing a similar instance under PMLA. The agency, last week, had also conducted searches at 40 locations across the country in order to check black money held with currency exchanges, haw-ala dealers and others.
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 old notes. The agency had registered an FIR against senior manager and branch head of the bank’s Basavanagudi branch S. Lakshimnarayana and directors of Omkar Parimal Mandir on Tuesday.
