Only transactional errors, no money laundering: Kochhar

ICICI Bank on Friday said some "transactional errors" have been discovered in the audit done following a sting operation by a online news portal but insisted there were no instances of money laundering.

"There have been instances of some errors which have been found. We would, to that extent, tighten our controls to reduce these errors but there have been no instances of money laundering that have taken place," ICICI's chief executive and managing director Chanda Kochhar told reporters after announcing the bank's Q4 results.

"These are transactional errors. In day-to-day working, any bank would have some amount of transactional errors. When you do an audit, you do discover some transactional errors but as I said, no instances of money laundering," she said.

Kochhar said the bank had set up an internal enquiry committee and also appointed Deloitte as an external auditor to carry out forensic analysis. The findings are based on the internal committee's report and Deloitte's

interim report, she said.

"Bank's procedures to implement KYC and anti-money laundering regulations have been found to be satisfactory," she said.

Last month, online news portal Cobrapost played the contents of purported video recording of officials of HDFC, ICICI and Axis bank allegedly agreeing to receive unverified sums of cash and put them in their investment schemes and benami accounts in violation of anti-money laundering laws.

A probe by the RBI found some "aberrations" in the working of the three banks.

Department of Financial Services Secretary Rajiv Takru had last week said: "An audit report has come and now the banks would probably be asked for their versions...We don't need to recommend anything; we discussed the issue and everybody will do whatever one is supposed to do after that."

Kochhar emphasised that no suspicious transactions have taken place either in the 14 branches where undercover reporters from Cobrapost purportedly carried out the sting or any of its other branches.

Image: ICICI Bank chief executive and managing director Chanda Kochhar.