The Incredible Banker (21 page)

'I am aware of all this. At that time I did not have the backing to fight the battle with Deepak and the credit folks. But why are you bringing this up now? I am done with all that...long ago. Don't tell me you called me all the way to apologise!!' Karan tried to lighten the atmosphere.

'No, Karan. What's happened has happened. It cannot be changed. I called you now to give you something which may be of interest to you. People at GB2 have given these papers a cursory glance only and hence they have not been able to get to the bottom of this. I know if you see this, you will be able to crack it in no time. Nobody has seriously looked at the data in the office.' He then opened his bag and pulled out a brown envelope and handed it over to Karan. "This might be of use.'

Karan accepted the envelope which seemed to contain about fifteen to twenty sheets of papers. 'What's this ?' he asked Amit.

'I can't say anything more, Karan. You just take a look. Call me on my wife's cell if you need to reach me. Do not call on my mobile or my land line,' Amit suggested.

'Sure, buddy. Noted. Thanks for your help.' Karan then signalled to the service boy to come and take their order. Before he could come in, Amit got up, 'I need to go, Karan. If anyone sees me with you, I will be in trouble.' He stood up and shook hands with Karan. 'See you, my friend.'

Karan pointed to the visiting card lying on the table and said, 'I didn't know you moved to compliance and regulatory reporting. When did this happen?'

For the first time that night Amit smiled. 'I moved to a new role almost immediately after you left. I couldn't bear the thought of being in that team especially after I fudged data and you left the bank, frustrated and dejected. When this job came up, I applied and got through. I have been here for some time now. We are now required to keep a copy of all the data sent to regulatory authorities, that's how this came to me. And, when some junior guy in operations sent this data to CBI without even looking at it, I knew this could mean trouble. On reading this story in the newspapers this morning, I knew this would blow up. And, when I saw your name at the bottom of the story, I felt I could help you. Karan, I could get sacked for this.'

"Thanks, buddy. Let me see this and come back to you.'

'Take care, Karan,' he said and left quickly.

Karan couldn't wait till he got back to office to open the packet. He tore it open hastily. Inside there were a few photocopies. There was a letter from CBI addressed to the CEO of GB2, a response form the bank to CBI along with a number of documents that they had asked for. In the file Karan found some photocopies.

• Application form
  
• KYC – Passport copy which was used as the residence proof and identity proof
  
• Photograph of the customer
  
• Photocopies of twelve months' credit card statements
  

And a few other documents. All of them related to the credit card of Francis D'Silva.

He sat there, staring at those documents. Something was not right. He kept looking at them again and again. He turned them over, changed the sequence, scanned them top to bottom, but couldn't figure out what was wrong. Four cups of Macchiato went down his throat. He was trying very hard to concentrate. The papers that had just been given to him were telling a story. But what was it?

He went through it sheet by sheet. The application form could hardly be called an application form. It was not completely filled up. A number of fields were blank. Usually such half-filled application forms would have been declined. There was a lot of overwriting on the form; the permanent address was missing and even details of loans and cards from other financial institutions were missing. The residence address given in the application form seemed to be incomplete. How such an application could get approved remained a mystery for Karan.

Next came the KYC document. In the case of Francis, his passport was submitted as proof of identity and residence.

He looked at Francis D'Silva's passport. It seemed original. The font on the passport was normal. The perforations on the passport looked genuine. But as he kept staring at it he was getting an uncomfortable feeling about its genuineness.

It needed just one moment of brilliance for everything to come flashing in front of him. But that moment was eluding him so far. He thought it futile to look through the balance documents repeatedly. He asked for the cheque, paid it, generously tipped the waiter and left.

Back in office, he called Bhaskar and sought a meeting. Bhaskar was an expert on Naxalism with hardly any experience in banking. So from a banking coverage perspective, Bhaskar was of little value. However, the plan that they had presented to Andy on how they were going to leverage on this story had a large banking angle to it.

Bhaskar was in Karan's cabin in the next ten minutes.

"Thanks, Bhaskar.'

'Yes, my friend, why did you call me here?'

'How was the CBI press conference?'

'It was routine. They just gave out a release...not much information. They did say Deepak is not cooperating and has been mostly silent. They said that they are trying to extract information from him, but it will take some time.'

'Hmm...what about the computer they seized from his residence ?' Karan asked.

'Most of the files are password-protected. Forensic experts are working with computer experts to break the code and open up the machine for inspection. That will throw up more light on the activities of the team.'

'Ok...anything on his family?'

'Oh yes, how did I forget that ? They said that after Deepak's arrest they fear a security threat to the family and so they have shifted his family to a safe location and are giving them security cover till the investigation is over. They also clarified that the family is currently not being treated as a suspect. They even said the preliminary investigations indicate that Deepak was operating alone and did not have any accomplices.'

'Bhaskar, we already know most of what they have told us. Their inferences are largely based on what the bank gave them.' He handed over the entire packet to Bhaskar which was lying with him till now. The latter looked through the entire set and frowned. He did not understand a word of what was written in them.

'Can you explain these statements to me? I can't understand anything.' He handed them back to Karan. They were not the usual statements sent to the customer but screen prints taken off the banks core banking system. Karan himself had taken some time to understand them, as screen dumps contained codes and internal references to the bank's internal accounts, and was not particularly in a user-friendly format like a normal credit card statement.

'Why are these like this, and not like a normal card statement?'

'Probably, because statements pertaining to periods beyond a year are normally archived. When CBI queried on Francis's account, some smart guy in the operations team would have found a quick fix. Instead of ordering the statements from the old documents retrieval unit, which would have taken three days and multitudes of follow-ups, he would have decided to take a screen dump and send it to the CBI.'

'Hmm...,' Bhaskar shook his head. It was too difficult for him to comprehend.

'Ok,' Karan began. 'Let's look at the card transactions for the month of July 2008.'

* Credit card statements are far more complex than what has been depicted here. It has been simplified for easy understanding

'On 5 July, he had bought stuff from Ghosh General Merchants for
42,800. On the eighth, he paid
43,000 into the account in cash. Again on 12 July, he bought some groceries. In fact, I suspect groceries because the shop has a name which sounds like a grocery store. He bought goods worth
47,624.0n 15 July, he paid
48,000 into the account. His card statement gets generated on 27 of every month. So when the July statement was generated, he had a credit balance of
576 in his account.'