The Incredible Banker (23 page)

Was Francis in Raipur? Or was he in Kolkata? Was he in Jamshedpur ? There was something fishy there. Was this the moment of brilliance that was eluding him? The customer was based in Mumbai. Francis's office and residence according to the application form were in Mumbai. There were transactions in Raipur and Jamshedpur and payments made in Kolkata. Didn't seem normal!

He then went and looked back at all his transactions in the past six months. Particularly the payments into the card account. And there it was! Staring at him right in the face. He had found the problem. He knew what had happened. The documents were so clear. He had cracked it. It could not have been anything else. When he would come out with these findings in the papers, he would be the king.

He called Bhaskar. When Bhaskar didn't pick up the call, he decided to send him a SMS.

'Bhaskar, I think I have cracked the problem. I will talk to you tomorrow morning. I am amazed at how you could figure this out before me. Hats off to you! I am proud to be working with you. Thanks. Goodnight.'

Within the next 15 seconds he received a message on his phone which just said,'
,
we will talk tomorrow. Well done. Goodnight.'

As Karan shut down his desktop and picked up his jacket from the chair to leave, he took one last look at the credit card transactions of Francis. Staring at it the last time, he tried to just make sure that he was not missing out something. He had looked at that paper so many times that day that he could now ratde off all the numbers in the sheet without even looking at it. He put it down and walked out of the room. He reached the lift lobby, still lost in thought about Francis and his exploits. He pressed the button to call the lift. It was in the second basement and he was on the sixth floor. The lift took some time in coming up. His mind space was completely overwhelmed by the transactions.

Was there was more to it than what he and Bhaskar had figured out? And then it hit him hard. He started sweating. The wall next to the lift supported him when he felt dizzy and almost fell down. Thankfully there was a bottle of water in the lift lobby with a dispenser. He grabbed a glass of water and gulped it down.

'Oh my God!' he said to himself. "This is not what we thought it to be. It could be worse.' He started to get scared. It could be big enough to knock him and Bhaskar out. He had to get help. He urgently dialled Bhaskar. He wasn't picking up. Karan composed himself and walked into the lift, which the liftman had held for him. At that hour, it was unlikely that anybody else would want the lift.

Karan got into his car and drove out of the Times building and drove towards the suburbs. As his car sped on the JJ Flyover, he decided to take the next course of action only after consulting Bhaskar and Andy. It was too big for him to take a call on his own.

R
ONALD McCain was a harassed man. If it was only
The Times of India
on Monday, the newspapers on Tuesday were splashed with stories about Deepak and GB2. Stories about how the banks had relaxed their stringent hiring criteria and about how easy it was for anti-social elements to get into banks dominated the media space. Times carried an article about the CBI findings and the information shared in the CBI press conference. Alongside that article on the front page, was an article. "The Deepak Sarup that I know'. It was an article by Karan Panjabi.

The article focused on human fallibility. It spoke about Deepak's aggressiveness and his uncontrolled desire to win and how the same could have led him astray. It spoke about how he enjoyed organisational support in almost everything he did. In the end the article left the readers with a question, and an interesting one at that. Was Deepak Sarup a Naxal sympathiser before he joined the bank, or did the Naxals find him an easy target given his attitude, ambition and organisational credibility, and brain-washed him into subscribing to their ideology? As of now the law enforcers are working on the former hypothesis, but it might be worth exploring the latter, too,' Karan had written.

'Sherlyn,' screamed Ronald McCain from his office. He never believed in using the intercom. When she heard him scream, Sherlyn came running in. 'Ask Rohan, Inder, Saurabh, Bhisham and the entire investigating team to see me right now. If they are not in the office, get them on a call'. Ronald had just got off a video conference with the Group Public Affairs in New York and they wanted to be sure that GB2 was on the right side and there was no wrongdoing or laxity on its part. They had to be updated in the next thirty minutes as the Group CEO in New York was about to address a press conference.

All of them assembled in his room within the next five minutes. At Bhisham's behest, Savitha joined in through video conference from her office in Malad. As Bhisham was not confident to handle Ronald all by himself, he requested Savitha to join in. She was the lone person on a VC while all the others were in Ronald's cabin.

'So what have we got here?' Ronald was not in a good mood when he kicked off the meeting. No one spoke. Everyone kept looking at each other, waiting for the other person to start. No one wanted to say anything stupid and be drawn into this debate. When no one spoke, Savitha started. She was in a peculiar situation. Everyone was staring into the video screen in order to avoid Ronald McCain's stare and thus she felt that everyone was looking at her and expected her to speak. However, she was ready with her story.

'Ronald, we have reviewed all the documents pertaining to the credit card of Francis D'Silva and have noticed some anomalies. Firstly, the passport copy given to us was fake. Our forensic team had visited the residence address given in the application form and on the passport and found that even though such an address existed, the Francis D'Silva who lived there passed away three years ago. And the photo on the passport copy is not his. The copy of the fraudulent passport has been made so brilliantly that it passed the fraud check that we do during the course of our approval process. While the card seems to have been acquired on a fake passport, all the other documents are fine as they have been certified by the corporate where Francis worked. The fraud seems to have escaped early detection since the performance on his card was impeccable. Not a single delayed or missed payment in the last twelve months and every time the customer has paid up 100 per cent of his outstanding. This makes us believe that there was no intention on the customer's side to defraud the bank. Possibly the sales guys, in their zeal to get the customer a card, helped him with a fake passport,' Savitha said. It was very normal in any bank for the credit teams to pass on the blame to the sales guys in case of a mess up. Savitha was doing nothing different.

'Are you saying, Savitha, that there is no way that we could have detected this fraud? I am sure there would have been warning signs. Our mails or credit card statements sent to this address would have returned. Wouldn't that have been a trigger?' Ronald asked impatiently.

'Yes, Ronald. That would surely have been a trigger. In this case, however, the card got delivered to the customer's office and all his statements are mailed to an email address. As a part of our green initiatives we are getting most of the new customers sign up for email statements.'

'Hmm...how are the other cards from the corporate performing?'

'We checked that as well, Ronald. In fact we track the performance on these cards every month. At the time of approving the deal we had mandated a monthly tracking of the portfolio and had even set up benchmarks. As per that approval condition, the performance of cards from this corporate is tracked and reported every month. I am happy to state that all the cards are performing brilliantly In fact they are performing in line with the best portfolios. It's a high spend and low default group of customers for us. Ideal, Ronald. Its an ideal portfolio. One thing important to be mentioned here is that the corporate has shut down. They have gone out of business in India and have exited the country. We sent someone to the corporate to check on this yesterday. This is the feedback we have received. Unfortunately we do not have any corporate bank relationship with Symbiotic Technologies, else we would have known earlier.'

"Ihen why don't we withdraw the damn cards from all their employees? How many of them are there who still have our credit cards ?' Ronald was getting worried.

'Ronald, it's about 900 of them. I do not think we can withdraw the cards facility because of two reasons. Firstly, there is no performance deterioration. They are performing well. And secondly, the cards were issued as personal cards and not as the corporate ones. As long as the customers keep paying us back, we will be drawn into trouble if we withdraw the credit card facility to them, especially now that this issue has come in public domain, withdrawing the cards immediately may not be looked at kindly.'

'Hmm...ok. Let's deal with Francis first. We will then figure a way of dealing with the others,' Ronald said.

A knock on the door disturbed them. She had been trying to reach him on the intercom, but he was so engrossed in the call that he didn't notice.

'Yes, Sherlyn?'

'I have a call on hold for you. Line 2.'

'Who is it?' Ronald didn't want to break the discussion with Savitha and the rest.

'Karan Panjabi from
The Times of India
'.

'Please put him on to Mansi. She is handling the press.'

'He says it is urgent. He needs to speak with you.'

'Tell that fucker that I will talk to any one but him. At least for the five years that he worked in this organisation, he should have had the courtesy of calling us before putting that damn story out on Monday morning. I have no intention of talking to him. Tell him that. He can do what he wants to do.' Ronald was indignant.

'Yes, boss.' Sherlyn went out of the room.

'Karan, I am sorry. Boss doesn't want to speak with you. He is still upset with your Monday article,' Sherlyn informed him.

"That was my job, Sherlyn. You know that. Why can't you explain this to him? Tell him that I want to tell him something which might be of interest to him.'

'I tried, Karan.'

'Please try one more time. Go and tell him that he will regret it if he doesn't speak with me,' Karan persisted.

'Shut up, Karan. You want me to threaten my boss ?'

'No, sweetie. I am not asking you to do that. But please...it is very important that I speak with him.'

'Can you wait for thirty minutes? Let him finish what he is doing and I will speak to him after that. He will be alone and also would have cooled down. .

'You said that he will be alone after this call. He has no other meetings lined up.'

'Not as of now...definitely not till twelve. The next meeting after this is a call with Singapore at noon.'

'If I get there now, will you get me an audience with him?' Karan asked.

I will try.'

"Thanks. I am coming there.'

In the next twenty minutes a puffing and panting Karan had reached the fifth floor office of GB2. Sherlyn gave him a warm hug as she took him into a conference room on the side. Karan was still a popular guy at GB2. When he was working for the bank, he was a soft-spoken guy who would never rub anyone the wrong way, until provoked to the extreme.

'What is all this crap, Karan?' she asked him.

'There's more to what meets the eye, Sherlyn. That's why I want to meet him. Did you tell him that I would be here?

'No, I did not because had I told him, he would have refused to see you. At least now, I can tell him that you are here and ask him for an audience. Now you wait here. I will be back in a jiffy.' Sherlyn left for her boss' room.

Within three minutes she was back. 'He says he doesn't want to see you. The organisation is very fussy about what word gets out and he doesn't want to quote anything to you beyond the brief that is to be put in the press note this evening.'

'What nonsense! Tell him that if he doesn't see me, he will be up shit creek. People are taking him for a ride and he doesn't realise that. Tell him that I am here because I still have my loyalties towards this organisation. I quit this place not because I wanted to, but because I was frustrated with the politics here. The same politics will take this bank down. It is in his own benefit that he listens to me. There is a racket out here, which he needs to control and fix.'

'Thank you, Mr Panjabi.' The thundering voice made them turn around. It was Ronald. 'I appreciate your concern. However, I would like to place on record that we have a competent team investigating this issue and would not like to engage with the press in an informal manner. Let it not be lost that you covered a very important piece without informing us. What makes you believe that we will have the same trust in you?'

'Ronald,' began Karan, 'I can only tell you what I have learnt. It will help you. We will in no manner alter our coverage or investigation to suit you. If you are interested in listening to me to protect your bank, you allow me to speak. Otherwise, I am wasting my time.'

"Thanks for coming here personally.' Ronald turned his back towards them, and held the conference room door open. Sherlyn was standing there, looking at the two of them, wondering whether to stay or leave.

Ronald showed no interest in what Karan was saying. Probably, the fact that Karan was an ex-employee added to his frustration. Ronald stood there stoically as Karan picked up his laptop and looked towards Ronald once again. It almost seemed like one last appeal.

'You are committing a big mistake, Ronald. Your own people will mislead you to protect their skin. I know I am not experienced or capable enough to preach to you, sir, but this is larger than it looks. You might need an external party to set it right for you. That might not be us, the press, but you definitely need some help here. If you change your mind, please do call me. Sherlyn has my number.' Saying so, Karan stormed out of the room.

'Bullshit!' barked Ronald, as he saw the back of Karan disappearing into the lift. 'I am glad he doesn't work for us anymore.'

'Ronald, he was one of the better ones we had. One thing he had in abundance was integrity. He was not a manipulative or political guy, and that worked against him. He was honest, Ronald. If there was any guy I would put my money on in these times, it would be him. But you are the boss.' Sherlyn left Ronald in the conference room and walked towards her desk. Her emotional plea, too, fell on deaf ears.

Back at work, Karan returned to polishing his report. He had a strong hunch – a very strong one. But it was not proven. He was feeling for his erstwhile employers and that's why he had spoken to Andy and Bhaskar. Only after getting them on the same page as he was had he tried to speak with Ronald. His conscience was now clear. He had made an attempt to forewarn GB2 but Ronald was not willing to hear.

A knock on his cabin door woke him up from his thoughts. It was Andy.

'How sure are you, Karan, about what you are saying? About your hypothesis?' Andy asked.

'Andy, it can't be anything else.'

'Do we have evidence ? We cannot go to town on this story without any evidence. It's something which has far-reaching implications. Apart from you, it has the potential to tear me to pieces, if we get this wrong,' Andy warned him.

'I am aware of that, Andy, and I have thought this through. I have considered all the possibilities and I am reasonably confident.'

'He is right, Andy. There can be no second possibility in this. If you disassociate yourself from GB2 and look at it dispassionately, you will realise what the real problem has been.' Bhaskar joined them.

'Why isn't GB2 realising it then? They, too, have smart people' was Andy's reply

'Maybe they, too, have found this out Andy, but they are not telling anyone. Ronald was extremely defensive today.. .just not willing to open up,' Karan explained.

'Or they still have some people on the inside, who work with Deepak and cover their tracks pretty well,' added Bhaskar.

'Hmm...but this time that's not going to be easy,' Karan added.

Andy was not convinced. 'Look folks, if you guys want me to give you a front page positioning, which this story will get given its explosive nature, I want you guys to get me some evidence. Even if it is not documentary, get me any verbal, circumstantial evidence...or something which convinces me that what you are saying is 100 per cent correct. In this case even a 99.9 per cent won't do. I acknowledge that this is a possibility, a very very strong one at that, but it's too big a chance to take without any evidence.'