The Incredible Banker Page 20

  Sherlyn called back almost immediately. 'Ronald, both Rohan and Inder are on line-2.'

  "Thanks Sherlyn.' Ronald walked to his desk to pick up line-2.

  'Good evening, folks,' he said. Both Inder and Rohan chorused, 'Evening Boss.'

  'Any progress on the investigation?'

  'Inder, you want to take the lead?' Rohan clearly had not done his homework. Probably the criticality hadn't sunk in yet.

  'Sure, Rohan.' Inder began his download. 'Ronald, we checked this gentleman's card performance. Absolutely clear performance. We have retrieved the application form, photograph and his KYC. They all seem to be in order. We have not been able to match his picture with that of the killed Naxalite because we don't have the picture of the Naxalite.Once we have that and also the forensic report of the passport copy, we will be able to confirm if the passport was genuine.'

  'By the way, we have requested the CBI for a photograph of the killed Naxalite. They have said that they will provide it soon. They have their own protocol to follow,' Rohan added.

  'Ok, great. As far as the card is concerned, the spending is reasonably high. Around 35-40,000 per month. The customer spends on his card and almost instantaneously pays up. He seems very conscious that he does not have to pay any penal charges or interest. Very good customer.'

  'Have you sent someone to the customer's house?'

  'Not yet, Ronald. We will do it soon. Since the CBI is investigating this case, we did not want to be seen to be interfering with the probe and that's why we have been going slow on external investigation. We have rather been focusing on the details that we have on hand.'

  "Thanks. Keep it low key and let me know the moment you find something fishy. Irrespective of what time of the day or night it is.'

  'Sure, Ronald,' Inder replied.

  Ronald was not happy. He felt that he was dealing with a bunch of incompetent people. A feeling shared by almost everyone who comes into foreign banks in India from overseas!

  Back at the TOI office, Karan was at his desk trying to finish his article which was scheduled to appear in the paper on Tuesday. This was as per the plan given by Karan and Bhaskar to Andy. He was almost through his first draft when the ring of the phone at his desk disturbed him. 'What the fuck!' he exclaimed as he stretched out his right hand to pick up the phone. He was desperately trying to focus as he had to finish the article and send it out.

  'Good evening, Karan here.' He didn't sound as if he was too keen on entertaining the caller.

  'Hi Karan, how are you?'

  'Who is this?'

  'It's me, you idiot! How can you forget me?' The caller seemed slightly annoyed.

  'What?' There was silence for a few seconds.

  'Karan, you still there?'

  'Oh God! It's you. What a surprise! And why are you calling me on my land line?'

  'I did not want to take a chance and call you on your mobile. You reported the story first. What if they are tracking your mobile? That's why I called on the board line. In fact I came back home to call you because I was worried that they might be tracking calls in and out of GB2.'

  It will, however, take some guts to tap phone lines in and out of The Times of India.

  'You sound as if you are about to reveal something gory and sinister?'

  'Maybe.'

  'What?' Karan couldn't believe. 'Tell me it is not about Francis or whoever the fella is ?' he continued after a few seconds.

  'Not on the phone, Karan. See me at the Café Coffee Day oudet in Kalaghoda in twenty minutes.'

  'Wait! Wait! Wait! I am just finishing my story. This has to go to press in the next one hour. Let me finish and then come.'

  'Karan, this can be the story of your life. You decide what you want. I can either meet you in the next twenty minutes or else I will see you the week after next. I am flying off to the USA tonight for a two-week holiday. You decide.'

  'But I have just completed the first draft of my piece, silly. Give me at least ten more minutes,' Karan persisted.

  'Ok, thirty minutes, at Café Coffee Day. I will wait for ten minutes. If you don't come, I will go home and see you in two weeks' time.'

  "This better be good, buddy.' The phone was disconnected by the time Karan spoke the final sentence. He looked at his watch. It was 7.45 p.m. He was already late for the next day's cover story. He quickly looked at the article. It was a seven on ten. He could do a better job if he had the time. But the guy on the phone had him hooked. Maybe there was something sinister.

  He emailed the half-baked story to Bhaskar and requested him to take a look at it before sending it to Andy. All the first page stories were personally read and passed by Andy. This was to make sure that there was no reputational impact to the newspaper. Andy read Karan's article and cleared it in one go. Karan is a genius, he thought and began reading other stories.

  Karan in the meantime rushed to the Cafe Coffee Day outlet at Kalaghoda. It was a good ten minutes from where the Times of India office was. He stopped a cab outside his office and hopped into it. The driver started haggling. Cabs in Mumbai never came easy for short distances.

  By the time the cab pulled outside Café Coffee Day, it was 8.20 p.m. He was five minutes late. Thankfully he had been given a grace of ten minutes, and he was well within the grace period. Hurriedly he hopped off the cab, gave him a fifty-rupee note and rushed into the café. He didn't even wait to take the change back from the cab driver.

  CCD at that time was almost empty. Kalaghoda and its surroundings were predominantly office locales which would be extremely crowded during the day. However by the evening, these lanes and bylanes would look deserted. Everyone would have left for home, and 8.20 was hardly a time for coffee.

  There were about five people in the CCD oudet at that time – all in different corners of the café. He looked around, as if hunting for his prey. And there he was. In the farthest corner where it was reasonably darker. Brooding over his cup of coffee was this guy whom he had seen a couple of years ago.

  'Hey, how are you, buddy? What a surprise?' The last he had seen of Amit was when he was in the mortgages role in western India. Amit was the credit head for mortgages at that time. He was Deepak Sarup's guy.

  The guy gave Karan a very nervous smile. It looked as if he was extremely scared.

  'Hi, Karan,' he responded.

  'Hey, what's up? Is everything ok? You don't look good,' Karan asked him.

  'I am fine, Karan. Except that I have been wondering for the past twenty-four hours, if I should do what my conscience tells me, or what my organisation demands of me as an employee.' Karan responded to his statement with a confused look.

  'You know, Karan, two years back when Deepak was auditing you in mortgages, I played a role in fixing the audit. On Deepak's insistence I fudged some data on valuations and legal opinions and that was held against you. No one knows about it except Deepak and me. You weren't even given an opportunity to defend yourself. The dice was so heavily loaded against you that you didn't have a choice but to look for greener pastures outside GB2.'

  '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.'

  'Interesting,' said Bhaskar.

  'What's interesting about it, Bhaskar?'

  'Why would he buy groceries for such a large value twice a month? No household needs this kind of supply.' Karan was surprised by this piece of information.

  'Hmm...interesting question. Maybe he was buying supplies to feed his entire band of villagers and tribals.'

  'Possible!' Bhaskar paused for a few seconds and then suddenly asked, 'What is his credit limit?'

  'Three lakh.'

  'Then why is he paying 43,000 and 48,000 twice in a month? Both these transactions are well within his credit limit. Even if he had paid 100,000 at the end of the month, after the statement is generated, he would not be charged any interest?'

  'Yes, Bhaskar. All credit cards give you the facility to spend upto your credit limit. If you are within your credit limit and pay the entire outstanding before the due date, no interest is charged. And you normally get three weeks from the time the statement is generated, to make the payment. Assuming that Francis had not paid up but incurred both the expenses in the month, his payment due would have been 91,000 and he would have had to pay the amount within three weeks of his statement generation date. And had he paid the e
ntire amount, he would not have had to pay any interest for sure.'

  Karan was a little surprised by Bhaskar's simple question and asked him, 'But tell me, Bhaskar, which credit card do you use?'

  'I don't use any card, Karan. I don't understand these calculations, so I always use cash. And worse, these days income tax authorities are closely tracking the spending on cards. I don't want to unnecessarily come under their scanner.'

  Which world are you living in, Bhaskar? The tax authorities normally raise their antenna only if you spend more than two lakh per annum on your card account, or if you pay over ?50,000 in cash whenever you make a payment into your card account. Otherwise the tax authorities don't even look at it.' Karan smiled in disbelief.

  'Maybe...I belong to the old school of thought.'

  'Hahaw...,'laughed Karan.

  'Ok, coming back to Francis. His behaviour is very unlike the Naxalites. Naxals are always short of cash. They keep looking for sympathisers for funding, and options to raise capital. They indulge in looting, extortion, etc., to raise money to buy arms and to feed the poor. They even commit murders when their ends are not met. It is suspected that the Naxal movement is funded by a section of the cash-rich mining industry. A significant number of mines in Central India are located in the Naxal strongholds. I know for sure that a number of mine owners pay protection money to these Naxals. Sometimes it is in cash, sometimes in kind. That said, the Naxals are always looking for money. I cannot think of a stage in the evolution of the Naxalite movement when they have had ample cash and resources,' Bhaskar said.

  'Ok, how is it relevant?'

  'Karan, you idiot, tell me, will someone short on cash ever pay the full amount before time, especially when the amount involved is well within your credit limit. If Francis was hard pressed for cash, he wouldn't pay 48,000 and 43,000 into the card account well before the due date.'

  'I see your point,' Karan's eyes lit up.

  'Can you see if he has done this in other months, or if July was an aberration?'