Al-Qaeda and Taliban funds safe in Co-operative banks in Kerala

Reserve Bank has asked the Union Home Ministry to inquire about several dozens of accounts held by dubious people in the primary cooperative banks in Kerala. It is said that the economic Intelligence wing of the Union Home Department, which had found these accounts, has started detailed examinations.

Sleuths believe that the terror operatives could have opted to carry out their financial deals through the relatively safe system of primary cooperative banks as accounts in the nationalized and scheduled banks have already been under scrutiny. “Also, it is safer to rely on cooperative banks as most of them are not yet included in the IT-based network,” said a senior Intelligence official.

Managers of most of these primary cooperative banks also tend to keep the details of their clients secret as far as possible as a majority of these accounts have been started as part of deposit mobilization programmes and through personal relationships. The sleuths have found that several people with dubious backgrounds had deposited huge amounts of money in cooperative banks in the Malabar region.

Officials say that the IB has been asked to find out the truth about such accounts as there have been reports of money being transferred by transnational Al-Qaeda and Taliban funds-managers into accounts through the hawala route and numbered accounts in Hong Kong banks from places like Dubai. The IB would bring under its lens accounts holding deposits of more than Rs 10 lakh in the beginning, it is said.

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