The Bankster (Ravi Subramanian) (36 page)

‘Jayakumar is a double agent. It is clear that he is working undercover for the Americans and Germans and maybe some others who do not want India to be a nuclear power, in their quest to stall the commissioning of the TNPP. I am sure they have multiple Jayakumars floating in the system to further their cause. Not only that, from what you are saying, and from what I have seen in the last twenty-four hours, Jayakumar is also working for the Israeli ammunition lobby, as a deal-maker. In the process, he is arm-twisting the people in the government who are on his payroll. He will succeed in one of the objectives. The government might succumb to the kickbacks and the pressure and end up buying from the Israelis. They might buy peace and save their three billion dollar investment. Or the government may procrastinate and delay the commissioning of the project, which suits the other nuclear powers. Either way, Jayakumar succeeds. And in the process, he will make his money.’

‘What a criminal mastermind!’

‘He is a criminal sir. He must be dealt with as a criminal.’ And Karan spoke to him at length, trying to talk Krishna Menon through the confusion and depression in his mind.

‘Thanks for the conversation friend. You have helped me see things more clearly.’

‘Have a good day sir. The TV anchor might not know the true story, and that’s why they would have succumbed to wrong information. Once they get to know the truth, they will back you sir. I know them very well. And that’s why I called back to tell you sir, that you must not back out. If you back out now, the anti-Indian forces will win. We would rather die losing than back out. It will be a shame on this nation if people like you are brow-beaten into submission. I will make sure my newspaper supports you.’

For the first time in thirty six-hours, Krishna smiled. ‘Yes my son. God bless.’ Karan bid him luck and hung up.

After this discussion, Krishna got up and walked to the washroom, where he splashed a few drops of water on his face. The call from Mumbai had rejuvenated his thoughts, his dreams, and had made his desire to fight even fiercer. By the time he walked out, Sulochana was also trying to get out of bed to make him some coffee.

‘It’s okay. Sleep for some more time. I will make the coffee for you today.’

‘What?’ She couldn’t even remember the last time Krishna had made coffee for her. Something was different. When she saw a changed Krishna, she began to wonder what was wrong. Or rather, what was right. Whatever it was, it had pepped up Krishna and made him happy.

‘I’m not going to give up. Jayakumar can do what he wants. I have the people supporting me. I will not give up. I will live my remaining life on my terms,’ said Krishna, when he saw her puzzled look and he poured a glass of water into the percolator and switched it on. A pleasant aroma of coffee filled the room as Krishna walked out through the connecting passage and opened the door and stepped out into the verandah. A new day had begun.

44

GB2, Mumbai

1
^st
February 2012

Indrani stared at the two people who had walked into her room.

‘Tanuja!’ a shocked Indrani exclaimed as she turned and looked at Karan. To Jacqueline’s right, with a big smile on her face was Tanuja. When she saw the grim looks on everyone’s face, her smile vanished.

‘Is everything alright Indrani?’

Indrani was confused. She didn’t know what to say. ‘Karan, do you know what you are doing? You’d better be sure.’

‘I am Indrani.’

Indrani was extremely unhappy that Karan had brought Tanuja into the picture. ‘Hope you have a plausible explanation for this. It’s disgusting.’

‘What is this about Indrani? I’m a bit confused. Is this something to do with the story that the Times is doing on GB2?’

‘There is no story Tanuja,’ Indrani responded.

‘Then? What is Karan doing here?’

‘Dilip Singh Rajput,’ Karan began his story without waiting for Indrani to respond to Tanuja’s query. ‘Heard of him?’ he asked, eyes firmly riveted on Tanuja.

‘I think Dilip works in our Jaipur Branch,’ Tanuja casually responded.

‘Yes Tanuja. He does. In fact, he is the Branch Manager of the Jaipur branch.’

‘Okay?’

‘Yogesh Bhargav was paid three hundred thousand rupees for having referred Dilip’s CV to GB2 for hiring.’ When Karan made this statement, Indrani wondered what the connection was.

‘That’s normal. We pay sixteen per cent of CTC for all the hiring we do through recruitment consultants.’

‘That’s fair,’ and he looked at Indrani. ‘Only if. . .’

‘Only if?’ Tanuja enquired.

‘Only if the candidate was referred by a recruitment consultant.’

‘What do you mean?’ Tanuja was getting increasingly agitated.

‘23rd September 2011, 2.46 p.m., Dilip Singh Rajput sends you a mail enclosing his CV. Same day at 4.52p.m., the CV gets forwarded to Yogesh Bhargav, who resends the same CV to you on 24th September at 9.45 a.m., with his stamp on it. Dilip Singh Rajput becomes a Yogesh Bhargav referred candidate, overnight. The funny thing is that as per Dilip Singh Rajput’s confession this morning, he doesn’t even know who Yogesh Bhargav is and hasn’t even spoken to him once.’

‘Are you insinuating that we are a corrupt bunch of HR professionals?’ Tanuja took him head-on.

‘Don’t get me wrong Tanuja. I am not insinuating anything. In fact, I’m stating it outright.’

Tanuja looked at Indrani, anger flashing in her eyes. ‘Indrani we can’t have an outsider passing judgments on all of us in your presence. I am answerable to you—not to him.’

Indrani was silent. She wanted to hear the whole story. Tanuja had questioned Karan’s intent, but she had not denied whatever he had said. ‘Let’s hear him and then we will decide Tanuja. There is no smoke without fire.’ Indrani was sitting at her desk, elbows on the table and her chin propped up by her palms.

‘Of the fifty personnel files we asked for, Indrani, twenty-nine were hired in the last two years through Yogesh Bhargav. Between the three of us, we spoke to fourteen of them this morning. I was shocked to know that none of them had sent their résumés to Yogesh Bhargav or had ever spoken to him. All fourteen of them had sent their résumés to either Tanuja or Vikram directly. Each RM is in the salary range of around ten lakh per annum, which means that we have paid around a lakh and half to recruit each of these guys. In the twenty minute check that we have done, it comes out that Yogesh Bhargav has been paid over twenty-one lakh extra for work that he’s never done.’

‘This is utter nonsense. You can’t corner me like this. I have no means of validating anything that you are saying. If I have the data, I can respond. My conscience is clear.’ It was irking Tanuja that Indrani was quiet and not saying a word. ‘I can go down and get the details right away in case you need it Indrani.’

‘I am fine as of now. I suggest you wait. And Karan. . .this was not in the remit. What is the relevance of Yogesh Bhargav in what we were trying to do?’

‘Indrani I was just trying to set the context. It only suggests that over the years, lakhs of rupees could have been siphoned off from the bank under the guise of vendor payments. It shows the mindset of the people in your management team.’

‘Point made. Move on Karan. I’m getting impatient. And don’t pass value judgments about people in the team. One bad apple does not mean the entire basket is rotten.’

‘Sure Indrani. I mentioned this to you earlier, but I will bring it up again. For the sake of Francis and our guest here, Tanuja,’ he said sarcastically, ‘when we examined all the accounts opened in the last year, we saw that in sixty-eight of these accounts, money came in from overseas and was withdrawn in cash in almost immediately. These transactions, particularly repeated instances of such transactions, confirms the presence of money laundering of some kind.’

‘Hmm. . .I am aware of that.’

‘All these accounts have been opened by a group of thirteen relationship managers. All these RMs have been hired with Vikram’s reference. There are mails from Vikram to Tanuja, which are on file which confirm Vikram’s comfort with the candidate and his approval to hire them. In all these mails he explicitly states that he knows the candidate, the reference checks have been done by him and he would like the candidate to be hired as a RM in a particular branch.’

‘Shouldn’t you be having this discussion with Vikram then?’ Tanuja seemed quite hurt by the accusations.

‘Yes. We can. Let’s call him in.’ He opened the door to Indrani’s cabin, stretched his neck and called out, ‘Jacqueline, can you please get Vikram?’

‘Sure.’

‘And also please ask Hemant how long he’ll be.’

In no time Vikram was in the cabin. Karan quickly handed him a list of thirteen RMs.

‘Do you know any of these RMs?’

Vikram looked at the names. He smiled as he saw Zinaida Gomes’ name there. ‘Yes. I know some of them. Not all. Why?’

‘If you don’t know all of them, how have you referred them for hiring, saying that you know them personally and are convinced of their capabilities?’

‘Rubbish.’ Vikram defended himself strongly. ‘In fact, I don’t even get involved in that process. And I haven’t recommended any of these for hiring. All of them have been hired following proper procedure.’

‘What’s this then?’ Karan asked, handing him a piece of paper. ‘As per this mail, you have recommended all of these RMs and have stated that you know them well. This has also been treated by HR as a tacit approval to waive off mandatory verifications.’

Vikram perused the mail. He had a surprised look on his face. ‘I need to check, because I don’t recollect having sent this mail.’ He looked at the piece of paper again. It was a mail from Tanuja to one of her direct reports, forwarding Vikram Bahl’s mail recommending the candidate. For a minute he was confused. Did it have anything to do with the deal with Yogesh Bhargav that he and Tanuja had? He didn’t know what to say and what not to. ‘Can I check and get back to you?’

‘See? It’s not my doing. Indrani, you unnecessarily insulted me in front of an outsider. If I don’t take it up with the region, it will only be because of our relationship and the respect that I have for you,’ Tanuja chimed in, sounding indignant.

‘We’ll see who takes it up with whom.’ The door flew open and Hemant walked in. ‘Before you go to the regional office and complain, just let us know why you hired these thirteen guys in the bank.’

‘Hemant you were not here when we discussed this issue. Vikram is going to check and get back to Indrani.’

‘That may not be necessary,’ Hemant barked. He seldom got upset, but when he did, no one could stand in front of him.

‘Why? May I ask?’ Tanuja mocked with a drawl.

‘Because, Tanuja, while those mails are on record, Vikram never sent them to you.’

‘What do you mean?’ Her voice was shaky now. Hemant observed that her phone was being passed on from one hand to the other and back again. . .a sure sign of nervousness.
Time to move in for the kill,
he thought.

‘You doctored those mails. You modified some other mails from Vikram and made them look like Vikram’s recommendations and forwarded them to your team to be printed out and included in the personnel file. You knew that no one from your team would dare to get back to Vikram on any of those candidates, knowing the two of you were close.’

Tanuja was indignant. ‘Are you out of your mind Hemant? Do you even know what you are saying?’

‘Yes madam, maybe while doing this, you forgot that there is a permanent imprint—a shadow copy—of every mail on the company server. A quick check run by IT confirmed that Vikram did not send those mails to you. We checked all thirteen cases for a match on time, date and content. And Tanuja, I am happy to confirm that these mails are fabricated. They just confirmed a minute ago.’ Karan had an evil grin on his face when Hemant said this, a grin which Tanuja hated. She had begun to despise him. ‘Hemant does this for a living. It took him all of fifteen minutes to figure out that these mails were fabricated. He was actually on a call with IT which is why he didn’t come in with me and Kavya,’ Karan looked at Indrani and offered an explanation.

‘And Indrani, I even spoke to a few branch managers,’ Hemant continued. ‘They don’t have the courage to check these RMs because of the perception that these RMs are close to Vikram. And using that to their advantage, these RMs opened sixty-eight fraudulent accounts which have been used as a conduit for laundering over two hundred crore rupees. And worse, none of the Branch Managers want to confront these account holders and classify these accounts as a suspicious transaction monitored account because in the branch-banking world there is a perception created by these RM’s that these are Vikram’s references.’

Vikram was aghast. He didn’t know any of those relationship managers. How could Tanuja double-cross him? He was not ready to believe that Tanuja could have fabricated those mails.

‘My email ID is accessed by multiple people, including my secretary and a few people in the department. They have the right to send and receive emails from my ID. We need to investigate this further to get to the bottom of this before we affix the blame on one individual.’ Tanuja’s defence was a good one. But she was not prepared for what came next.

‘We can do that Tanuja, but before that, can you take a look at this list and see if any name rings a bell?’ Karan handed her the same list he had given Vikram earlier.

Tanuja refused to be drawn into a conversation with Karan. In what she considered a direct snub to Karan, she looked at Indrani and answered Karan’s question. ‘I don’t remember these cases Indrani. I will check and get back to you.’

‘Do you know these guys at all?’ Karan ignored the snub and handed her the list with thirteen names.

‘No, I don’t think I know them.’

‘Are you sure you don’t know them?’

‘I may know
of
one or two of them but I don’t know any of them well enough.’

‘Then how do you explain this?’ Karan handed her the mobile bill reimbursements for the last few months.