CVC lambasts money laundering bill

The money laundering bill, introduced in the winter session of Parliament last year, has been referred to parliamentary standing committee. Dwelling at length on the implications of the new Information Technology Act on the banking sector, Vittal said that the important feature of the Act was that it recognises offences that could be committed in the era of information technology and has provided for penalties. Tampering with computer source documents, breach of confidentiality and privacy, publishing false digital signature certificate and publication of digital signature for fraudulent purposes have been recognised by the Act as crimes and punishments prescribed, he said.

Central Vigilance Commission has set a deadline of January 1, 2001 for computerisation of 70 per cent of the operations of banks all over the country, Vittal said, adding application of it in banking sector would expedite banking operations and reduce the drudgery and time taken in normal banking operations. The emergence of electronic-banking where banking transactions can be carried out on internet would result in at least 11 per cent cost savings besides time, Vittal said. "When Indian banks are moving towards getting at least 70 per cent of their business computerised, electronic fund transfer will become very important. I have been saying that instead of the strategy of branch-wise computerisation, we should go for bank-wide computerisation," he said.

The fact that the requisite infrastructure was also being put up by the Reserve Bank of India in the form of a 438 VSAT network had created the right environment, he said. IT Bill had sent a positive signal to the Indian banks to get on to e-commerce bandwagon in tune with the rest of the world while also taking adequate care of the security aspects involved, he said.