India's largest private sector bank, ICICI Bank has been more than once issued letter of warning by RBI for violating Reserve Bank of India guidelines.

The issue was surfaced in a written reply to Lok Sabha by the Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee.

In 2007-08, the bank was issued letter of displeasure, warning about the opening of fictitious deposit accounts. The case related to the opening of fictitious accounts by fraudsters at the Patna branch of the bank.

In December 2007, the bank was extended an 'Advisory Note' and later in April 2008, the bank received a Letter of Warning against non-transparency in its securities dealing in Hong Kong region.

Some of the other banks have been also under the purview for violating FEMA guidelines and opening of deposit accounts. The names include ABN Amro Bank, Dena Bank, Bank of Baroda, HSBC Bank, Centurion Bank of Punjab, State Bank of Bikaner & Jaipur, Bank of India, Deutsche Bank, Yes Bank, Vijaya Bank, ING Vysya Bank and SBI Commercial and International Ltd.

The minister stated some of the violations -"non-adherence of know-your-customer (KYC) norms, failure of internal controls in initial public offerings, violation of foreign exchange management guidelines and non-maintenance of prescribed cash reserve ratio (CRR) and statutory liquidity ratio (SLR)". 

ING Vysya Bank and Vijaya Bank were for alleged defaulting on CRR. The regulator imposed a penal interest of over Rs 1 crore on them.

The minister emphasised the role of RBI and stated that RBI has been vested with various powers to perform functions such as currency management, debt management, and supervision of banks, financial institutions, non-banking finance companies, and regulation of market rates.

"as and when any such issue of conflict of interest come to the fore, appropriate remedial measure is taken to remove the conflict, depending upon the state of preparedness of the system," he added.

The KYC (Know Your Customer) norms require that the banking institution must conduct due diligence before entering into a business relationship with the client.

Statutary Liquidity Reserve/Ratio (SLR) is the percentage of deposits, that a bank is required to maintain in form of cash, or gold or approved securities.