NEW DELHI: Following information of financial crimes including money laundering and hawala dealing post demonetisation, the enforcement directorate (ED) on Monday initiated search operation at over 50 bank branches in major cities.
The search operation started on Wednesday morning with teams of the ED conducting raids over 50 branches of at least ten banks, both in the private and public sector. Officials said that ED officials were accompanies by banking auditors to scrutinise transaction records and account statements, armed with vital inputs gathered from financial snoop agencies.
ED teams 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. “There are inputs about maximum amount of old notes deposited or huge cash deposited in bank accounts in one go or in a staggered fashion giving rise to suspicion of suspect deposits,” said an official.
Officials 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.
Ealier, ED arrested two Axis Bank employees working at a branch in Delhi while probing a similar instance under PMLA. Last week, had also conducted searches at 40 locations across the country in order to check black money held with currency exchanges, hawala dealers and others.
The ED, tasked with enforcing two important laws to check financial crimes--Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA)--has sourced Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs) and Cash Transaction Reports (CTRs) of the banks under scanner from various financial intelligence agencies and has launched the operation to check possible financial irregularities, instances of money laundering and hawala dealings.