This is the story of a common man who started his career in a small CA firm based in Pune and now he is the Managing Director of one of the biggest antifraud company in retail banking. The activity of Fraud Control Units was started in India by Citi Bank.
Chandrashekhar Gokhale, who is a Certified Bank Forensic Accountant and also a Certified ANtimoney Laundering Expert started his career in a Leading CA firm before he started the outsouricng of the Fraud Control Unit.
ICICI started this activity after Citi Bank. Citi did not have any strong volumes, hence ICICI was the first bank to outsource the activity of Fraud Control in India. Shekhar Gokhale in year 2000 started the outsourcing of fraud control function in India and started doing the same after ICICI Bank was hit by a major syndicate fraud in credit cards and since then his company Astute Corporate Services is giving services to close to 25 financers in this field, and is the largest in terms of coverage and also in terms of clientele for FCU activity.
All the frauds he has investigated are dear to his heart but one of the most important cases in his career is a Home finance case, which was logged in for a total amount of Rs.4.00 crores in the year 2002 and the same syndicate had applied for Personal Loans of Rs.25.00 lacs were stopped from getting disbursed during the course of pre disbursement Fraud Control measures taken up by bank.
He takes pride in stating that the Fraud control or Risk Management activity was given to Astute after a major syndicate fraud had hit in the credit cards industry. His company is very important because since 2000, from the time his company took over the antifraud activities, not a single syndicate fraud has been reported in entire maharashtra.
He feels that there is a huge scope for the Certified Bank Forensic Accountants, with the implementation of Basel II norms, they will have a roll to play. He is however not happy with the future of students who would participate in the antifraud activity as such. He feels that the students should come forward and should foresee the huge opportunity for the students in the banking domain with the cross function knowledge of AML and the banking frauds.
