ICICI Bank Sacks Former CEO Of Russia Unit

ICICI Bank has dismissed its former CEO of Russian operations over ''integrity issues''. He was found to have entered into improper dealings. The official, who was ICICI Bank Eurasia LLC''s former president and CEO for around two years, was transferred to India earlier this year and was with bank''s treasury operations where he was involved in the proprietary book. He was also said to have channelled investments into real estate in the country. The matter came to light after one of the employees of the Russian operations bought it to notice of the bank, recently. The bank has informed the Reserve Bank of India and is also in the process of informing Russian authorities.

In 2005, ICICI Bank had bought a small-sized bank Investitsionno-Kreditny Bank (IKB), a closely-held Russian bank with a registered office at Balabanovo in the Kaluga region which is 190 km south-west of Moscow. The bank had picked up the entire equity capital of around $1.2 million. The official had been with the Russian operations from the time of the acquisition. The bank has been extremely wary about compliance issues in Russia after local operations were pulled up by authorities for delayed reporting on transactions under obligatory supervision, including a cash transaction, and errors in the matters reported to the Federal Service for Financial Monitoring in 2005 and up to March 31, 2006. These omissions were contrary to the requirements under the Russian legislation on anti-money laundering.