The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has conducted another round of searches at 67 locations in seven cities in Rajasthan and Maharashtra to probe suspicious Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) transactions amounting to approximately ₹820 crore across multiple UCO Bank accounts.

The CBI swung into action after registering a case on November 21, 2023, on a complaint received from the UCO Bank. The PSU bank reported to the CBI that between November 10 and 11, 2023 IMPS inward transactions initiated from around 14,600 account holders of seven private banks were wrongfully posted in the accounts of over 41,000 UCO Bank account holders.

This resulted in ₹820 crore being credited to UCO Bank accounts without actual debiting from the originating banks. Numerous account holders from seven banks including IDFC First Bank, Jana Small Finance Bank, Suryoday Small Finance Bank, Fincare Small Finance Bank and Utkarsh Small Finance have exploited this situation, making wrongful gains by withdrawing funds through various banking channels, the CBI alleged.

The CBI found that several of the account holders have made wrongful gains by withdrawing money from the UCO Bank by using various banking channels. Of these transactions involving about ₹820 crore, ₹664 crore has been recovered by the bank by marking lien in the accounts and ₹156 crore was the outstanding recovery as on November 16, last year, the bank told the CBI.

Last December, the sleuths conducted searches at 13 locations involving that of private individuals and UCO Bank officials in Kolkata and Mangalore. In continuation to the above, extensive search operations were carried out on Wednesday in Rajasthan (including Jodhpur, Jaipur, Jalore, Nagaur, Barmer, Phalodi) and Pune.

“During these operations, approximately 130 incriminating documents related to UCO Bank and IDFC, as well as 43 digital devices (including 40 mobile phones, 2 hard disks, and 1 internet dongle) were seized for forensic analysis. Additionally, 30 suspects were also found and examined on the spot,” said a CBI spokesperson.

According to the CBI FIR, two persons, Avishek Srivastava and Supriya Mallick, both Support Engineers (Facility Management) of M/s LCode Technologies, hired by the bank to maintain its app, are suspected to have changed port number of IMPS transactions in the production server without authorisation from the UCO bank on November 8, 2023. “Due to this, though our CBS has credited the account of the beneficiary, it send the failed response to the IMPS switch through UNISER and Connect 24, accordingly failed response was sent to remitter bank..” the FIR revealed.

A total of 120 Rajasthan Police personnel, including armed forces, were deployed to ensure the smooth conduct of the search operations. Further, 210 personnel comprising 40 teams, including 130 CBI officials, and 80 independent witnesses from various departments were also involved in the operation.

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