Kochi: Enforcement Directorate and CBI officials raided offices of select cooperative banks in different parts of the State on Wednesday.
ED officials conducted inspections in the district cooperative banks of Kannur, Kozhikode and Thrissur while a team of CBI officials conducted inspections of records of district cooperative bank in Kollam and Malappuram Services Cooperative Bank.
Inspections were mainly on deposits collected by banks after November 8 when the Prime Minister had announced the decision on demonetisation. Sources familiar with the development said inspections were held following a tip-off that some of these cooperative banks were conduits for parking unaccounted money sourced from the country and abroad. “We suspect that some of the accounts in these district cooperative banks were used to transfer unaccounted money came from abroad through hawala channels,” said an official in the ED.
According to ED officials involved in inspection of records of Thrissur District Cooperative Bank, the...bank mainly focused on the amount received during November 10-14 when cooperative banks were allowed to collect deposits from customers. Officials also asked for details of amounts received by the bank from primary cooperative societies during these days. They also collected details of deposits of '1 crore and above in the bank.
Offices of district cooperative banks in Kozhikode and Kannur were raided by Enforcement officials to check the deposit and transaction after November 8. The team, led by deputy director, checked whether there was a major difference from in transactions carried out from October.
The team also checked major deposits and withdrawals. They also checked whether any organisations had carried out major transactions via RTGS. The ED officials collected many documents from banks.
A group of 12 CBI officials descended in the office of the Kollam district cooperative bank in the morning and examined various records of transactions, while another team of officials went to the Services Cooperative Bank in Malappuram. CBI officials remained tight-lipped about the raids.
A senior CBI official confirmed that raids were connected with huge deposits in cooperative banks and the suspected connivance of certain bank officials in amassing such deposits. A few days ago Income-tax officials conducted a similar kind of examinations in the offices of select cooperative banks in the state.
Deposits in cooperative banks in the state came under a cloud since primary cooperative societies are allowed to accept deposits without fulfilling any KYC norms. The matter became a political controversy with the BJP leaders in the state levelling allegations that both ruling LDF and the Opposition UDF are engaged in protecting the interest of hoarders of black money in the name of safeguarding the interests of cooperative sector.
