Probe RBI Officials’ Role In Scams By CBI: Subramanian Swamy Urges Supreme Court

Picture courtesy IANS

Chennai: Senior BJP leader Subramanian Swamy has urged the Supreme Court to order a probe into Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) illegalities in discharging their official functions that have resulted in various banking/financial scams in India. He demanded the probe to be conducted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) or any other competent authority.

Swami was assisted by advocates MR Venkatesh and Satyapaul Sabharwal in filing a PIL at the apex court in this regard on Tuesday.

The advocates alleged in the petition that RBI officials have been in demonstrable active connivance and in grave violations of their statutory duties, reported Business Standard.

“…no officer of RBI has ever been held accountable for any dereliction of duty in case of any fraud reported by any bank. This is in sharp contrast to the number of frauds exploding in the banking sector in India aggregating to in excess of over Rs 3 lakh crore (Rs three trillion),” the PIL stated.

The PIL further stated that in the last two years, several banks have reported scams after scams wherein the role of bank officials were clearly made out but surprisingly not even a single RBI official has been brought to justice despite RBI retaining the power to monitor, regulate, supervise, audit and direct the functioning of all banking companies in India, the report stated.

“Put pithily, the scheme of the Banking Regulation Act makes the Reserve Bank of India the alter ego of Bank Management, more so in case of public sector banks. Yet, in none of the high-profile banking scams the Central Bureau of Investigation investigating these scams has not even sought to examine at a cursory level, the role of officials of RBI,” Swamy stated in his PIL.

The petitioner mentioned various scams like Kingfisher, Bank of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh-private sugar organisation, Nirav Modi/ Punjab National Bank, Lakshmi Vilas Bank, ILFS, PMC Bank, Yes Bank, First Leasing in the petition.

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