Let me tell you a recent tale. I have a salary a/c in one of the xBI subsidary banks and then my company shifted to some other bank for salary a/c's and i too went down that route. I kept some 5K odd ruppees in this older savings bank a/c and never touched it. But i periodically log-in to take note of the 4% Savings Bank interest that accumulates at half-yearly period and then pay the tax for the same when filing income tax returns. Some 2 or 3 months before - i got a letter stating that i had to provide my KYC again for this account and that i had to go to the branch for the same. I kept postponing it due to lack of time and unknown to me - my Bank Account got temporarily de-activated. I got to know about this after one of my colleagues also had his a/c locked up. So i went to show my KYC & got the a/c re-activated. I learnt from one of my friends who is a bank manager .. that since DeMo - the RBI had asked dormant or low-frequency-usage bank a/c's to be de-activated until the customer comes with his KYC detail to make the a/c active again. So i was asked to put some money into this a/c periodically and also take some money out via ATM at other times - rather than just login to check the amount in the a/c !.Gus wrote:Bank accounts have kyc stuff and it is not possible to just easily disappear...maybe a few folks but on a mass scale?
The only way mass scale fraud happened in demo was with collusion of bankers.
This month - my landlord suffered a similar issue with his IOB a/c at a Chennai branch. My NEFT/IMPS transactions to pay house rent into his a/c failed 3 consecutive times and i reported it to him. He called up his branch manager and was informed that since only credits were happening into this a/c - the bank had to follow recent guidelines (from RBI i guess or if not from bank's top management) and thus de-activated the a/c and would only re-activate it if proper KYC is provided by the customer !!.
I guess this way .. any savings bank a/c with one-sided usage or very-low-frequency-usage (being misused for conducting identity-less benami transactions or so) and even active a/c's that raise suspicions of black money transactions can be de-activated and the customer made to come to the bank branch with proper KYC and get the same re-activated !!. This would help dig out further bank a/c's that appear suspicious in one way or the other from perspective of black money. It surely is a hassle for the common man but the bank employees are very cagey in indicating the real reason for this requests for KYC i.e to find if a suspicious a/c is being used for black money or not.