RBI Lowers Its Fine Penalty on Citibank

RBI Lowers Its Fine Penalty on CitibankThe Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has reduced its previous fine of Rs. 50 lakh to Rs. 25 lakh on Citibank after finding it guilty for violating anti money laundering (AML) and "know your customer" norms.

For long, Citibank was successfully hiding its fraud but a single blunder made by its Relationship Manager, Shivraj Puri, brought its true image in the public.

It has been told that Shivraj Puri used to approach rich customers to ask them to invest their money in to a lucrative scheme. But in actual there was no such scheme available. However, the employees of Citigroup were successful in looting Rs 300 crore from the investors.

As soon as RBI came to know about the fraud, Puri was put behind the bars. The information about the fraud was given to the RBI by the Citibank only in the month of January, this year.

The Citibank's fraud brought the various banks in the forefront which have been into the practice of misleading investor and illegally acquiring their money. Till now RBI has fined 19 banks for falsely selling derivative products and seven other banks for not following the guidelines while opening the demat accounts.