Rs820-cr UCO bank scam: CBI conducts second round of searches; 2 Engineers booked

New Delhi: The CBI has conducted searches at 67 locations in seven cities of Rajasthan and Maharashtra in connection with the Rs 820-crore Immediate Payment System (IMPS) scam in UCO bank, officials said Thursday. The searches that started on Wednesday and continued till Thursday pertain to the mammoth scam in UCO Bank that transpired in three days - November 10-13, 2023 - through 8,53,049 transactions spread across 2,874 branches in 41,296 accounts across 35 states and Union territories. "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 Rs. 820 crore being credited to UCO Bank accounts without actual debiting from the originating banks," the CBI Spokesperson said.

The transactions were initiated from IDFC First Bank, Jana Small Finance Bank, Suryoday Small Finance Bank, Fincare Small Finance Bank, Capital Small Finance Bank, Utkarsh Small Finance Bank and ESAF Small Finance Bank, the FIR registered on the basis of UCO bank's complaint and made public on Thursday alleged. The CBI has filed the FIR against Avishek Srivastava and Supriya Mallick, Support Engineers in the Mangaluru-based LCode Technologies, it said. The company was hired to develop and maintain mobile banking applications for the bank, including the IMPS channel, the FIR said. It is suspected that both were present during the incident and log reports indicate that either of the two changed the port number of IMPS transactions without authorisation from the bank on November 8 at 7 PM, it alleged.

Because of the alleged changes made in the system, the core banking software credited the beneficiary's account but sent a failed message to the remitter bank through the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the FIR alleged. "Due to this, the amount got credited in both banks i.e UCO and originating bank customers' accounts," it said. It was also found that several of the account holders misused and made wrongful gains by withdrawing the proceeds from UCO Bank using various banking channels.

The bank also came across various social media posts where the fact has been mentioned that despite the transaction being reversed in the IMPS remitters' account, the IMPS beneficiary account with UCO bank was being credited. "The suspected persons and their associates with criminal intent and ulterior motives, have colluded on a large scale, carried these transactions and committed the organised crime against the public sector bank i.e UCO Bank," it said.

The bank alleged in its complaint, which is now part of the FIR, that several account holders collaborated with others and undertook these illegal transactions in a syndicated manner. The searches in Rajasthan and Maharashtra, which started on Wednesday and continued till Thursday, focused on people who received the money and withdrew it rather than returning it to the bank, officials said. This is the second round of searches. In Rajasthan alone, the amount involved was over Rs 766 crore through 7,71,752 transactions spread across 232 branches, followed by Maharashtra, where Rs 11 crore came into dispute.

The bank has recovered Rs 664 crore but Rs 156 is yet to be realised, the bank said. "Earlier in December 2023, searches were conducted at 13 locations involving private individuals and UCO Bank officials in Kolkata and Mangalore," the Spokesperson said. Over 330 police personnel, including 120 from Rajasthan Police, in 40 teams and 80 independent witnesses were involved in the action spread across multiple cities, including Jodhpur, Jaipur, Jalore, Nagaur, Barmer, Phalodi) and Pune (Maharashtra). "During these operations, approximately 130 incriminating documents related to UCO Bank and IDFC, as well as 43 digital devices (including 40 mobile phones, two hard disks, and one internet dongle) were seized for forensic analysis. "Additionally, 30 suspects were also found and examined on the spot," the Spokesperson said.