After raids in 2 branches, Axis Bank says it won't tolerate any undesirable behaviours
"We would like to assure you that Axis Bank stays committed to the success of the Government’s initiative of demonetization and facilitating transition towards digitalized economy," Axis bank said in a statement.
"Axis Bank is committed to maintaining the strongest operational controls and has no tolerance for undesirable behaviours that circumvent laid out processes," it said.
The Income Tax department, on Thursday, raided the Axis Bank's Connaught Place branch in New Delhi after raiding a branch in Noida earlier in the day, according to media reports.
The bank said it "has rigorous compliance procedures and has also gone ahead and applied all our analytic capability to identify accounts that might have exhibited suspicious activity since demonetization."
"We would like to add that the investigative agencies have identified some potentially suspect accounts for which the Bank had already filed STRs in the past with FIU- IND. Apart from this the Bank has also files additional STRs with FIU in this period proactively," the bank said in the statement.
"We understand that the visit by the investigative agencies to our branches has been pursuant to the CTR’s & STRs filed by the Bank under the extant KYC & AML norms as applicable to the Bank," it said.
The Bank informed has also taken the unprecedented step of temporarily suspending some of these accounts.
During the Noida Sector 51 branch raid, IT officers unearthed accounts belonging to 20 fake companies, media reported.
Over rupees 60 crores were found to have been deposited in these fake accounts, media reported.
According to reports, the IT department zeroed in on the Noida branch when a jeweller in Noida was found to have sold gold worth Rs 600 crore after the demonetisation scheme was announced on Nov 8 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
A few days back, IT officials had raided an Axis Bank branch in Delhi’s Chandni Chowk area.
The Economic Times reported that IT officials had said that about Rs 100 crore in old notes had been deposited in the accounts since November 8, the date of the announcement of demonetisation by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The bank subsequently suspended 16 employees and the Enforcement Directorate had arrested two bank managers.
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