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The Economic Times June 10, 2018 As multi-agency probe continues in India into alleged lapses involving ICICI Bank's chief Chanda Kochhar and her family members, the matter has also come under the scanner of the US markets regulator  SEC .  Besides, the Indian regulators and investigative agencies are mulling seeking help from their overseas counterparts including in Mauritius as part of their own probes, officials said.  When asked about its probe into matters related to ICICI Bank and Kochhar, a spokesperson for the SEC Office of Public Affairs declined to comment.  The queries sent to ICICI Bank also remained unanswered. The bank has already instituted an independent enquiry into allegations of 'conflict of interest' and 'quid pro quo' in Kochhar's dealing with certain borrowers.  Earlier in March, when the reports first surfaced in this regard, the bank had said that its board has "full confidence and reposes full faith...

Dawn June 10, 2018 AFTER months of wrangling and meetings, the government appears ready to submit an action plan to the Financial Action Task Force in order to prevent being blacklisted by the global watchdog. Approval of the plan will mean Pakistan will be on the ‘grey list’ of countries that have “strategic deficiencies” in their financial systems to prevent their use for money laundering and terror financing. With an action plan, the country is committed to taking the steps outlined to remove deficiencies and plug the holes where laundered and terrorist money can enter the financial system. Much wrangling preceded the move, and even though many details are opaque since FATF does not operate in a transparent way, it seems the PML-N government had a tough time agreeing to all the demands. But much has been done by now. The Jamaatud Dawa and its offshoot, the Falah-i-Insaniyat, have been banned, their operations seized by the state, their bank accounts and those of individual...

Financial Express June 11, 2018 With the finance ministry having formed a panel to explore the feasibility of a ‘bad bank’ to clear the dud asset mess, senior public-sector bankers are preparing to pitch in with ideas for likely discussions with the committee to help shape such an ecosystem. A senior banker with a Delhi-based lender said India might take a cue from the Chinese system where asset management companies (AMCs), set up with initial equity capital injection by the government, take over stressed assets of state-run banks attached to them and dispose them of in ten years after turning them around. “We can have at least two AMCs (China has four) and the government may distribute PSBs among these two for taking over bad assets,” he said. One such model, indicated in a thesis on the management of asset quality submitted to a Rajasthan University by Fareed Ahmed, moots two banks/funds to take over stressed assets of public-sector banks (PSBs) and work them out, without a...

Financial Express June 11, 2018 Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday called for creating a mechanism to counter terrorism, separatism, and extremism in the coming three years as part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Putin said in an official statement that the recently-concluded SCO summit at Qingdao called for cooperation among the member-countries to tackle issues including terrorism by designing counter-terrorism operations and holding joint drills, and to provide information regarding the operational activities by extremist groups. Earlier on Friday, Prime Minister  Narendra Modi  had said in his departure note before leaving for Qingdao that “SCO has a rich agenda for cooperation, ranging from fighting terrorism, separatism and extremism.” Putin further called on the SCO Youth Council to work towards “preventing the recruitment of young people to participate in terrorist activities.” Taking stock of the on-going turmoil in war-ridden Af...