The Central Vigilance Commission has also started an investigation into deposits made by government officials in the 50-day period after demonetisation was announced.
The Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) has initiated a high-level probe into whether private banks received more cash for disbursal during the 50-day demonetisation exercise last year.
In this connection, the CVC first approached the RBI to obtain disbursal details for the period between 8 November and 31 December, 2016. This data, however, only contained information of disbursal from the RBI to designated currency chests in respective cities from where all banks withdraw currency amounts.
“The RBI usually designates PSU banks in different regions to act as currency chests. The complaint is that private banks were able to draw more currency than other banks from this point. So, we have started the exercise of collecting disbursal information from these currency chests to get a clearer understanding,” Chief Vigilance Commissioner K.V. Chowdary told ThePrint.
Simultaneously, the CVC has also started a probe into deposits made by government officials in the 50-day period. The threshold kept was of deposits of Rs 10 lakh and above.
In the first flush, the Central Board of Direct Taxes identified 90,000 government servants, including PSU employees, in this category.
“But the CBDT told us that they have a software to filter the data better. They would provide us the filtered data by the end of this month or the beginning of next month. Then we would be able to further study it and see if there is any mismatch in income and deposits,” said Chowdary.
The CBDT is still filtering the data with the help of a special software, which would now include the deposits made by the close family members of the government employees. To this end, the CBDT in its presentation to the CVC, conveyed that the software for the filtering process has been tested and would provide a more accurate picture of cash deposited by the employee and his or her family.
Besides, the CVC is carrying out investigations against 40-50,000 senior PSU bank employees for different acts of alleged misconduct during that period.
“They are at different stages of action. Many have been penalised and punished. We are only concerned with senior bank officials. But there are many in the clerical staff too, and they are being examined by the banks itself,” said Chowdary.