Despite the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) adopting new measures to check cases of fraud in the banking sector, the illegal activity has witnessed a spike during the first quarter of the current fiscal.
Banks and customers have together suffered losses to the tune of Rs 1246 crore due to cases of forgery during the first three months of the current financial year.
The RBI had formed a high level committee after the Rs 400 crore banking fraud in a Gurgaon branch of Citibank, but the effort of the central bank to tackle the illegal activity seems to have fallen flat.
The recent figures of the financial year 2011-12 reveal that as many as 229 cases of banking fraud have been registered with Citibank itself. The condition is similar in other banks as well. The leading private bank of the country, ICICI has reported 1961 fraudulence cases, blocking Rs 14 crores of its customers.
The data provided by the Banking Department of Ministry of Finance reveals that in the year 2008-09, the banking sector had to suffer a loss of Rs 1880.53 crores. During this time period, 23,579 cases of banking fraud came into light.
In the year 2010-11, 19834 cases were registered which led to a loss of Rs 3799.06 crores.
Thereafter, RBI issued stern directives to tackle the fraudulent practices prevalent in government, private and international banks.
According to the new rules, the branch manager of a particular branch will be held responsible for any case related to bank forgery.
The highly placed sources in RBI claimed that banks are not following the directives issued by it.
This can be gauged from the fact that despite RBI's directive of giving compulsory off for a stipulated time period to senior officials in banks, the order has not been implemented by majority of banks.
Notably, the directive was issued with an aim to assess the work of the official by the person who would look after his work in his absence.
Moreover, many banks do not follow banking rules while reporting banking fraud cases.
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