New Delhi, 7 March

The CBI has conducted searches at 67 locations in seven cities of Rajasthan and Maharashtra in connection with the Rs 820-crore Immediate Payment System (IMPS) scam in UCO bank, officials said Thursday.

The searches that started on Wednesday and continued till Thursday pertain to the mammoth scam in UCO Bank that transpired in three days - November 10-13, 2023 - through 8,53,049 transactions spread across 2,874 branches in 41,296 accounts across 35 states and Union territories.

"IMPS inward transactions initiated from around 14,600 account holders of seven private banks were wrongfully posted in the accounts of over 41,000 UCO Bank account holders. This resulted in Rs. 820 crore being credited to UCO Bank accounts without actual debiting from the originating banks," the CBI Spokesperson said.

The transactions were initiated from IDFC First Bank, Jana Small Finance Bank, Suryoday Small Finance Bank, Fincare Small Finance Bank, Capital Small Finance Bank, Utkarsh Small Finance Bank and ESAF Small Finance Bank, the FIR registered on the basis of UCO bank's complaint and made public on Thursday alleged.

The CBI has filed the FIR against Avishek Srivastava and Supriya Mallick, Support Engineers in the Mangaluru-based LCode Technologies, it said. The company was hired to develop and maintain mobile banking applications for the bank, including the IMPS channel, the FIR said.

It is suspected that both were present during the incident and log reports indicate that either of the two changed the port number of IMPS transactions without authorisation from the bank on November 8 at 7 PM, it alleged.