Days after it imposed a monetary penalty of Rs 7 crore on four PSU banks, the Reserve Bank of India has slapped a fine of Rs 1 crore on ICICI Bank for delays in the implementations of the new controls relating to the SWIFT system of international payments.
The SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications System) is messaging service used by financial institutions to securely transmit information related to payment approval.
The RBI issued guidelines to banks relating to the use of SWIFT after it was found that two rogue employees of Punjab National Bank had taken advantage of lax oversight and poorly designed procedures to authorize loan guarantees worth $2 billion to diamond merchant Nirav Modi.
Separately, ICICI Bank is also the scanner after reports regarding alleged irregularities and corrupt practices in sanctioning a Rs 1,875 crore loan to the Videocon Group.
The Bank’s former CEO and Managing Director Chanda Kochchar, her husband Deepak Kochchar and Videocon Managing Director Venugopal Dhoot were quizzed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday in connection with theat case.
Headquartered in Mumbai, ICICI Bank is one of the ‘Big Four’ banks of the country and has operations in UK, Canada, the US, Singapore, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and Hong Kong.
Yesterday, Karnataka Bank too said that it had been slapped with a fine over the same issue.