Union Bank starts Auditing Branches

After some of its branches were interrogated by the income-tax department for their involvement in the Madhu Koda money-laundering case, state-owned Union Bank has started auditing the accounts of the branches which had shown high transactions.
Talking to FE, a top brass of the bank said on condition of anonymity, “We have already asked some of those branches to go for fresh audit that are having high-value transactions.” However, he refused to give any further details.
The bank official stressed that entire transactions in his bank was in compliance with Know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) norms.
Another official of the bank said that like other banks, all the branches of his bank had undergone audit on a regular basis.
However, the periodicity of the audit depends on the risk categorisation of the branches, added the official.
It means that while some of the branches undergo audit on an annual basis, there may be quite a few branches of the bank that may require audit on a half-yearly basis, he said without giving any further details.
The act of special audit by the banks comes in the wake of the government asking the bank to carry out an audit of all its branches without delay so as to find out if any large deposits in the bank went unreported.
The bank chairman & managing director, MV Nair, was questioned by the officials of the income tax department in Mumbai on Monday.
The I-T department, during a probe into alleged money laundering by former Jharkhand chief minister Madhu Koda, had stashed Rs Rs 214 crore on a bank account at one of the bank’s branches in Zaveri Bazar between January 5 and March 30, 2007.
Nair was not available for his comments as he is busy with the preparations of the board meeting of his bank in New Delhi.