Friday, 10 January 2014

Banks Arm Twisting Clients Hit By Derivatives Scandal

Chennai: The exporter-victims who have suffered huge losses due to their banks ind­ulg­ing in illegal foreign curr­ency ‘loot’ transactions are being forced by the banks to convert those lo­sses as corporate loans so as to save the bank exe­cu­tives from blame for these scam-related losses, it is alleged.

“This is nothing but an attempt to cover up the scam of illegal foreign cu­r­­rency ‘loot’ derivative transactions and save the concerned bank banks arm Twisting Clients executives. In this process, the firms already hit badly by the scam will soon crumble under the unbearable burden of these fresh loans for no fault of the­irs.
                                                           
 
The customers resisting this conversion of der­ivates transaction los­ses into loans are bei­ng arm-twisted by the ba­nks threatening to stop their accounts and classifying them as NPAs (non-perfo­r­ming assets). This is gr­o­ssly unfair, unethical and illegal as it violates RBI norms,” said Raja M. Sh­an­mugham, MD of Wa­r­s­aw International at Tir­upur.

He is also president of Forex Derivates Cons­u­mers Forum, which was launched in 2008 to get all the victim-firms under one umbrella for fighting the banks which had sold them what these firms allege were fraudulent foreign exchange derivative contracts involving currency which the exp­orter/importer was not concerned with and also, linking the exchange of exposed currency with unconnected currencies.

This scam triggered by some foreign banks led to huge losses to the collaborating Indian banks, whi­ch they passed on to the innocent clients. The los­s­es are estimated to be in the range of Rs 30,000-50,­000 crore and the scam was also believed to have led to the fall of the Indi­an rupee.

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