Gurugram Police ask private banks to increase internal scrutiny, security

Gurugram: After the arrest of eight officials of two private banks for their alleged connivance with cybercriminals in the last one month, the Gurugram police have asked bank officials to increase internal scrutiny for opening accounts and electronic surveillance ATM kiosks and branches, officials said on Wednesday.

A meeting was held on Friday between Gurugram Police and senior bank authorities in the city during which they were asked to ensure that customer verification gets done properly so that mule accounts could not be created.

Priyanshu Diwan, assistant commissioner of police (cybercrime), said that bankers were asked to ensure verification of all the customers whose accounts were getting opened.

“The meeting was held in the backdrop of the arrest of eight bank officials in three separate cybercrime cases in which it surfaced that they were continuously supplying mule accounts to conmen solely because customer verification was not done effectively,” he said adding the bank authorities present in the meeting were asked to adhere to Reserve Bank of India’s guidelines for complete verification of customers internally instead of getting it done by a third-party firm.

“They were also asked to enhance the quality of the electronic surveillance which includes installing high-definition cameras which could be used for facial recognition of suspects or criminals when required. ATM kiosks must have night vision cameras and they should be installed in such a way that face of anyone entering inside is captured clearly,” he said.

Siddhant Jain, deputy commissioner of police (cybercrime), said they started keeping a separate record of summons or letters sent to bank officials for investigation in cybercrime cases from January this year. “We are acting as per the records to ensure getting timebound information from banks for crackdown on criminals,” DCP said.

Jain said they had asked the banks to give priority to requests like freezing amount in suspicious accounts as it safeguards money lost by a cybercrime victim. “Last month, we sent a detailed letter to RBI about banking violations and urged that its guidelines be strictly enforced by private banks to avoid giving rise to mule accounts,” he said.

A private bank official, without preferring to be named, said that they do try to give information to police at earliest. “However, not everything like installing high quality cameras or verification or scrutiny of new customer accounts was in their hands. These decisions are taken at headquarters level,” he added.