The Indian government has asked banks not to give short-term loans to visa applicants, especially those seeking immigration, to help them create artificially inflated bank assets on paper and an easy passage abroad. 

Suspecting gross misuse of banks to show inflated assets for visa applicants, the advisory was recently issued by the finance ministry on the advice of the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), sources said. 

The directive comes in the wake of a massive scam that has Immigration Canada officials helping Indian authorities uncover the operations of a millionaire in the Punjab city of Chandigarh.

Initial investigations have already turned up dozens of cases where fake financial documents supplied by officials from private and national Indian banks were used by applicants to obtain visas from British, Canadian and other high commissions and embassies in India, The South Asian Post reported recently.

Applicants had paid amounts ranging from C$3,000 up to C$10,000 to seek visitor visas and permanent residency immigration to other countries.

Last week, the Indian Department of Financial Services (DFS) issued the advisory based on the recommendations of the CVC that unearthed the innovative fraud to show inflated assets for aspiring immigrants. 

Sources said that the CVC found instances of several visa applicants - largely those bound for Canada and Australia - having exaggerated fixed deposit receipts (FDRs) overnight. Investigation revealed that these FDRs were issued at the instances of travel agents, who provided the margin money to banks. 

The inflated bank balance for visa applicants was created in collusion between bank officials and travel agents. Travel agents provided margin money and stood guarantor for banks to provide loans to the visa applicants. Later, the loans were converted into FDRs in the visa applicants’ names and furnished in embassies and high commissions as bank balance of would-be immigrants. 

The modus operandi suggests that once the exaggerated bank deposits were shown as evidence, the FDRs were dissolved and loans returned to banks. “Basically it is a sham to defraud foreign missions,” a senior official said. 

CVC sources said they were awaiting more evidence before conducting a thorough probe or entrusting the CBI with the investigation. However, there are “enough inputs” about the growing racket. Initial inputs were about certain branches of State Bank of Patiala and State Bank of India that are based in Punjab, sources said.

In the ngoing-investigation, Indian police have detained Chandigarh-based millionaire Amit Kakkar, owner and director of Healthyway Immigration and he has been booked for cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy.

“The British, Canadian and Australian embassies contacted the police and shared information about the fake documents. We are investigating the matter thoroughly,” Deputy Superintendent of Police Ashish Kapoor said in Chandigarh.

Police investigations so far have shown that out of the 252 financial documents examined, 248 were found fake. Many, including about 50 from student visa applicants, were attached to forms to come to Canada.

“In one case alone, all 112 bank documents supposedly issued by the Patiala Road branch of the Oriental Bank of Commerce in Rajpura town (40 km from Chandigarh) have been found to be fake,” Kapoor said.

He said the role of nationalised banks in this illegal operation is also being investigated.

The role of certain bank officials in preparing fake bank documents will be investigated, he added.

“Other fake documents have been issued illegally in the name of banks in other parts of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. We are investigating everything,” an investigating officer told IANS.

The financial documents were sought by the embassies of various countries from immigration aspirants to ensure that they have the financial capacity to go and support themselves in the new country.

One complainant Amandeep Singh said accused owner Kakkar took about C$43,000 from him to send him to Canada.

On its website, Healthyway Immigration claims that it has around 84 offices all over India.

“The company is also flourishing globally with its offices in various countries like Singapore, Australia and UK. More than 128 colleges and universities all over the world have authorized the company as their educational consultants. Also, most of these institutes claim that Healthyway Immigration has channeled the maximum number of students towards them as compared to any other immigration company in the world,” the website boasts.

Canada is also likely to soon introduce fingerprinting for Indian citizens seeking Canadian visas.

The new measure is part of Canadian plans to boost border security and check immigration fraud. India, which is the second biggest source of immigration for Canada, will be the first country to be subjected to fingerprinting.

The Canadian consulate in Chandigarh, which holds a high profile in Western Canada’s Indo-Canadian community, is among the diplomatic missions in India that faced a high incidence of fraudulent and forged documentation submitted with visa applications.

An Immigration Canada document made public by the South Asian Post in an earlier report stated “fraud is omnipresent in Chandigarh and is found in every sort of document, Indian and Canadian.”

“We have seen copies of forged Canadian passports, forged PR cards, forced Notices of Assessment from the Canadian Revenue Agency, forged Indian bank documents, forged employment letters both Indian and Canadian, forged letters from Canadian funeral homes and from Canadian educational institutions,” said the documents.

“Entire ‘kits’ of forged documents are regularly seen, supporting requests for parents to visit their children in Canada and to attend the funerals in Canada of close relatives.”

Fraud is being detected in the applications by religious workers for Gurdwaras or Sikh temples in Canada, people applying to be nannies and in spousal applications. Citizenship and Immigration Canada acknowledges roughly 1,000 fraud marriage cases are reported annually in Punjab.