Money laundering: 22 banks fined Rs 49.5 crore by RBI

New Delhi, July 15: The RBI on Monday imposed fines totalling Rs 49.5 crore on 22 private and public sector banks including SBI, PNB and Yes Bank for violating know your customer/anti-money laundering norms. It also gave cautionary letters to seven including Citibank and Stanchart following an expose made by an online portal.

"After considering the facts of each case...Reserve Bank came to conclusion that some of the violations were substantiated and warranted imposition of monetary penalty..." the central bank said in a statement.

A penalty of Rs 3 crore each has been imposed on State Bank of India (SBI), Bank of India, Canara Bank, Bank of Baroda, Central Bank of India, Indian Overseas Bank and Federal Bank.

United Bank of India, Lakshmi Vilas Bank, Punjab National Bank, Jammu & Kashmir Bank and Andhra Bank were slapped a penalty of Rs 2.5 crore each.

A penalty of Rs 2 crore each was imposed on Yes Bank, Vijaya Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce and Dhanlaxmi Bank. The other banks which were penalised by the RBI include Deutsche Bank, Development Credit Bank, ING Vysya Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and Ratnakar Bank.

Besides, Reserve Bank has issued cautionary letters to Citibank, Standard Chartered Bank, Barclays Bank, BNP Paribas, Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi and State Bank of Patiala. Following probe into charges levelled by an online portal Cobrapost, RBI has earlier imposed fines totalling Rs 10.5 crore on top three private lenders - Axis Bank, HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank.

Although the investigation did not reveal any prima facie evidence of money laundering, RBI said that "any conclusive inference in this regard can be drawn only by an end-to-end investigation of the transactions by tax and enforcement agencies".

PTI