Chakrabarty: Anti-laundering control system is perfect

Our people have gone to scrutinise not only these banks HDFC Bank,ICICI Bank and Axis Bank,we will do it for all the banks, Chakrabarty said.

Web portal Cobrapost conducted a sting operation and played the purported video recording of officials of the three banks seemingly agreeing to receive unverified sums of cash and put them in their investment schemes and benami accounts. However,no account was opened nor any cash deposited.

We dont require a sting operation to say that in this country people have black money or some black money remains in the bank account. Dont say that our system is so bad. We are sensitive to what is happening. We are thankful to the people who do the operation as this gives us an opportunity8230; the concerned banks always look into that8230; we also look into that. But we dont make it as a systemic issue, Chakrabarty said after a meeting with bankers here.

Chakrabarty made a distinction between money laundering and money on which tax is not paid and that the two were different.

Our money laundering system is perfect.. but there may be other irregularities8230; KYC things,suspicious transactions,for which there are sufficient guidelines and banks are following them, he said.

We are going in for a large scale financial inclusion. If KYC regulations are too stringent,then banks will not open new accounts. So how do we integrate the requirement of a society which is trying to penetrate into the banks, Chakrabarty said.

On private bank regulations after the sting he said,Our rules are same for all the regulated entities. Regulation is always ownership neutral.