Nirav Modi & PNB Scam: When Idiots Run Banks

PNB bosses have a lot to explain in this Nirav Modi scam. First and the foremost, how this bank employee (and possibly so many others across the country in different branches) had direct and unfettered access to SWIFT system.
Two things strike me here:

(1) Poor IT implementation - Though I am not a finance person, I wonder why the Bank did not interface SWIFT through its core banking. In such case, rogue employees would have no direct access to SWIFT and all transactions such this letter thing would have to go through a workflow and would also be traceable. To someone who works in the IT industry, this appears elementary. If so, his bosses(if they were not snoring to glory) would have to approve such letters. Even their audit would have caught it immediately (again, assuming they work).But sharing Swift access credentials(either sharing a login id and password to multiple employees or, giving  a login id to numerous people, with no checkpoint in between is mind-numbing stupidity.


(2) I have friends in Banking Sector (private banks, not PSUs) who have told me the concept of forced annual leave in which employees have to temporarily hand over charge and go on leave every year. This is done in the name of vacation but the idea is for a second person to see if things are okay. In this case, the managers possibly never bothered to institute such practices. Sitting in HQ is never a good practice.