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The Sun reported Thursday that Bahree sold a reporter operating undercover information on 1,000 bank accounts. Bahree reportedly obtained the data from contacts at call centers in Delhi, where the information was sold. The Sun in its online edition, however, gave the name of the seller as Kkaran Bahree.
Police in Delhi say that they cannot make an arrest unless there is a formal complaint from either the call-center companies in India from where the information was allegedly stolen or from the affected banks or customers in the U.K. "As soon as we get a complaint, we will arrest him," said a police official on condition of anonymity. Police are conducting their own investigations, he added.
"From what I understand there has been no complaint registered with the police here, probably because investigations are still going on in the U.K.," said Kiran Karnik, president of the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM). " Until they have a complaint, the enforcement agencies haven't much to go by at this point."
NASSCOM announced Thursday that it would cooperate with law enforcement agencies in India and the U.K. to ensure that those responsible for any criminal breaches are promptly prosecuted and face the maximum penalty.
However, Bahree denied the allegations in an interview Thursday to BBC World Service radio, and said that he had given a CD to the undercover reporter at the request of another person, without knowing its contents.
Infinity eSearch, a Web services company in Gurgaon, near Delhi, where Bahree is employed, has distanced itself from its employee. Infinity does not have bank clients in the U.K., and does not handle financial information for its clients, Rahul Dutt, managing director of the company, told reporters Friday in Delhi.
Bahree has been with the company for three months and is still on probation, said Dutt, adding that Bahree had been asked to give an explanation about his alleged role in the scam by 5:30 p.m. Friday local time. Bahree, who was not in the office Friday, sent a written explanation before the deadline claiming, according to Infinity officials, that he gave The Sun reporter a CD at the insistence of a friend without knowing that it held classified contents.
Bahree was employed as a call-center worker by Daksh eServices Pvt. Ltd., a business process outsourcing company in Gurgaon from 2001 to January last year, before the company was acquired by IBM. He quit under normal circumstances, according to informed sources, who added that at the time he left Daksh the company was not offering financial services.
And onto the next:
(The story is at)
http://in.rediff.com/money/2005/jun/24bpo3.htm
Karan Bahree, an employee of the Gurgaon-based call centre in the middle of a scam involving leakage of credit card information, on Friday admitted to his role in the fraud exposed by British tabloid The Sun in a sting operation, his company Infinity e-Search has said.
British tabloid The Sun, on Thursday, had claimed that its undercover reporter was sold top secret information on 1,000 accounts and number of passports and credit cards for about £2,750 and was asked for another £275 later (approximately a total of Rs 2.5 lakh) by India-based Karan Bahree.
The 24-year-old employee claimed he did not know that the information contained in the CD was classified.
Outsourcing and India: Complete Coverage
Bahree, who did not appear in person, sent his reply to the company, which said "he was approached by a person known to him named Sameer, who gave him a CD and asked Bahree to make a presentation to a person named Oliver who had come from the UK".
Bahree made a presentation on the CD and delivered it to Oliver and was paid "some" money, which was shared between him and Sameer, his reply said.
However, it was not clear whether Bahree's letter disclosed the contents of the CD, but it is believed that the CD had phone numbers and bank details of people.
Infinity lawyer Deepak Masih told reporters, "We are handing over the letter to the investigative agencies). Bahree has not been sacked as of now because he has not done anything against the company. DSP of Gurgaon is looking into the case."
Earlier in the day, Masih said: "Our business does not deal with anything to deal with classified information. That's why he cannot take it from our company. If he does something individually out of the job, we are not responsible for this. It is a coincidence that he is working with us".
Last one:
(the link to the story)
http://www.southasianmedia.net/index_story.cfm?id=216401&category=Frontend&Country=INDIA
NEW DELHI/LONDON: A day after the Indian call centre industry's worst nightmare came true, a number of unanswered questions were piling up in London and Delhi.
Banks in the UK made statements that cast doubt on The Sun’s claims as well on the provenance of the 'leaked' data. The tabloid, in a follow-up report, said the banks suggested the information could have come from non-banking companies doing business in India, such as mobile phone firms.
On the Indian side, the man at the centre of the storm surfaced to deny any wrongdoing. And the Gurgaon police began a preliminary probe after orders from Haryana CM Bhupinder Hooda. A Gurgaon police officer went to the Infinity office seeking details about the company and its operations.
Karan Bahree submitted a written statement to his employer, Infinity E-Search.
He made himself heard on Friday but only to make contradictory statements on the allegation in a newspaper that he had divulged confidential information about customers of British banks in exchange for money.
In an explanation issued through his employer, Infinity eSearch, the 24-year-old IT worker admitted to accepting money in exchange for a CD on the instruction of an acquaintance of the reporter who wrote the story for The Sun, Britain’s largest selling tabloid newspaper. But in an interview to the BBC World Service, Bahree denied taking money.
Bahree, who is alleged to have taken $5,000 from The Sun and asked for “another £275”, told the BBC: “No, it’s not true. This associate got in touch with me and he told me to hand over the stuff which he got, it was as a channel, nothing else. I don’t know anything about that. I was just told that this was only simple customer information you get so that a customer could be contacted, nothing else.”
The Sun report on Thursday did not mention the engagement of an “associate” by the journalist, Oliver Harvey. But Harvey wrote the report, which was carried under his name, in the third person, which appeared to suggest that a third party had been employed by Harvey as a go-between.
Infinity eSearch said Bahree, who has been with it for three months and is on probation, revealed in the statement delivered by a relative “that he did accept money from the reporter. He also stated that he was asked by Sameer Asim, an acquaintance of Sun reporter Oliver Harvey, to hand over the CD”.
Deepak Masih, the legal counsel for Infinity, said: “Bahree made a presentation on the CD and delivered it to Oliver and was paid ‘some’ money, which was shared between him and Sameer.”
In the BBC interview, Bahree says: “I am not aware of the contents (of the CD)... I was just told that it only has simple customer information details so that the customers could be contacted.”
The Sun had reported on Thursday that Bahree had sold its undercover reporter information about bank accounts, held by British customers, such as passwords, addresses and telephone numbers as well as passport details. It had said it paid about $5 for each of the 1,000 accounts it bought.
Masih refused to say whether the CD had details of bank accounts and phone numbers. He also declined to respond when asked how it was possible that since Bahree himself had made a presentation, he could claim to be unaware of the contents.
“It is for the investigative agencies to deal with. We are just highlighting the points of the statement,” Masih said, adding that the company would hand it over to Delhi police.
Infinity’s effort on Thursday was to distance itself from Bahree. Rahul Dutt, its managing director, said: “We have no bank clients in the UK and we do not deal with any information that is classified. We are into things like web development.”
One of the big banks mentioned in the Sun report, Barclays, said on Friday details of customer accounts allegedly sold by Bahree had not come from its operations. Spokesman Alan White said: “We have investigated every piece of data passed to us. It is now clear that this could not have come from Barclays operations.
Masih said no law enforcement agency had yet approached Infinity. But IT industry sources said senior officials from Haryana police had visited the company’s Gurgaon premises.
“No one has contacted us... we are not hiding and we have nothing to hide,” said Dutt.
Infinity has not sacked Bahree yet “because he has not done anything against the company”.
According to the BBC, Bahree offered the following explanation of a photo in The Sun showing him holding what looks like dollars. “He offered me the stuff, he told me that this could be yours, he told me this thing, you get me the information. ‘You can earn a lot more like this.’ I said it’s primarily not possible in India.”
A number of other banks like the Woolwich, HSBC and Lloyds TSB said they were investigating the matter. Still others — Halifax, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Nationwide and NatWest — said they did not have any call centres in India.
A recent investigation carried out by the watchdog of City, London’s financial hub, the Financial Services Authority, found that Indian call centres posed no greater risk to security than ones in the UK. It added that in some cases security was better.
"Any claims that Bahree has confessed are absolutely baseless," Infinity CEO Rahul Dutt told Hindustan Times. (PTI had reported that Bahree had admitted to his role in the fraud.) "He has given us a written statement that we passed on to the Gurgaon police in the evening. In that, Bahree hasn't admitted to having leaked any data. In any case, we are not a call centre but a web-design firm and possess no data to reveal. Bahree has told us that some guy called Samir introduced him to Oliver Harvey (the Sun undercover reporter) and he made a presentation thinking that there would be good money to be made."
Bahree also said Samir gave him a CD for Harvey, which he passed on without any knowledge of its contents. He also denied having received any payments.
Meanwhile, with the initial shock caused by the Sun's reporting subsiding a bit, the focus in London has shifted to finding out from where the 'information' came from.
Barclays told Hindustan Times: "We have investigated every piece of data passed to us. It is now clear that this could not have come from Barclays Operations. All the indications are that this data has come from a third party who provides goods or services which require their customers to provide bank details for credit or payment purposes."
The reason for the shift in the line of inquiry from suspicion about call centres to third parties follows very prompt statements from banks like Halifax, Royal Bank of Scotland and Nationwide that they had no operations in India relating to British-based customers.
The City of London Police spokeswoman hinted that the investigation would cover all aspects — including the fixing of original source of the information.
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