Swamy now accuses RBI Rajan of money laundering
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BJP MP Subramanian Swamy has launched a fresh attack on the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan, said a report in the India Today.In a letter to PM Modi, Swamy has accused Rajan and other officials of the RBI of money laundering and has sought the formation of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the charges.Swamy even says that a case should be registered under the prevention of corruption act, adding that those close to former finance minister P Chidamabaram had benefited from the decisions.
He further claimed that RBI had granted licenses to small financial banks allegedly for money laundering purposes. He added that those who were granted licenses are controlled by foreign entities.This is not the first time Swamy has attacked Rajan. Earlier too, he had written to PM Modi urging him to sack Rajan because he was 'deliberately' trying to "wreck the Indian economy", and was also "mentally not fully Indian".
Swami had demanded a CBI-led probe into the fact that RBI has allegedly been flouting its own rules while granting 10 small finance bank licences.Seeking action against RBI officials, including governor Raghuram Rajan, the Rajya Sabha MP alleged that the 10 entities were granted ‘in-principle approval’ by the RBI despite their failure to meet the eligibility criteria set out in the central bank’s guidelines, including those regarding foreign holding. Swamy, who had earlier written to the Prime Minister seeking the dismissal of Rajan for failing to lower interest rates and boost the economy, said that the RBI has “failed to perform the duty diligently” in grant of these approvals and there seemed to be “on the face of it, a mala fide negligence.”
He also sought to link the grant of the licences to possible money laundering of funds belonging to politicians and bureaucrats “friendly” to a former finance minister who still “dominates” high posts in the ministry.Swamy has said that the 10 licences granted in the private sector to small finance banks do not fulfil the criterion laid down by RBI “which confirms the malice in the RBI decision.”
The BJP MP said the guidelines for grant of licences were “brazenly flouted” in granting approval.“Therefore, these illegal approvals attract Section l3(1)(d)(iii) of the Prevention of Corruption, Act (1988). The present governor of RBI is thus answerable in a probe into this matter,” he said in his letter to the Prime Minister. “You may therefore consider a probe by the CBI-led SIT (Special Investigation Team), and have RBI officials including the governor of RBI interrogated for this scam,” Swamy wrote.
In his letter he also alleged that it is clear from the annual reports of the 10 banks that none of them are a Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC), Micro Finance Institution (MFI) or a Local Area Bank (LAB) and “not even a single company of short-listed applicants fulfils all the criteria laid down in the guidelines for SFB (Small Finance Bank) which confirms malice in the RBI decision”.
