CBI arrests Bank of Baroda AGM, forex operations chief

New Delhi: An assistant general manager and head of the foreign exchange division of Bank of Baroda (BoB) were Tuesday arrested by CBI in the Rs 6,000 crore suspicious remittances case executed through one of the bank's branches in the national capital.

The agency said it arrested AGM S K Garg and Jainish Dubey, who headed the Foreign Exchange division at BoB's branch in Ashok Vihar here, under various provisions of the IPC and the Prevention of Corruption Act.

The alleged irregularities had come to notice recently and the agency had conducted searches on the bank premises and residences of Garg and Dubey last week.

The CBI FIR had alleged that "59 current account holders and unknown bank officials conspired to send overseas remittances, mostly to Hong Kong, of foreign exchange worth approximately Rs 6,000 crore in illegal and irregular manner in violation of established banking norms under the garb of payments towards suspected non-existent imports".

CBI sources had said these remittances were sent by splitting them into amounts below one lakh USD to avoid automatic detection by software used by banks to alert them about such transactions.

The Enforcement Directorate too is probing the case and had participated in the searches conducted by CBI.

CBI sources had found that the Ashok Vihar branch of the bank was a relatively new one which had got the permission to entertain forex transactions only in 2013.

CBI found that an estimated Rs 6,000 crore was transferred through nearly 8,000 transactions done between July, 2014 and July, 2015.