NEW DELHI: Indian investigators intensified their probe Friday into a multimillion dollar banking and financial services scandal, widening the probe to include 21 more companies. The Central Bureau of Investigation arrested eight senior officials from some of India's top financial services companies Wednesday on charges they took bribes in exchange for large loans and confidential business information. The officials were being questioned and 21 more companies were being probed and had been issued notices to open their books to investigators, said a CBI spokesman, R.K. Gaur. The eight officials were accused of taking huge bribes from executives of a Mumbai-based financial services firm, Money Matters Group, to facilitate large corporate loans. The CBI has not revealed the size of the alleged bribes. The bribes-for-loans scam could not have come at a worse time for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's embattled coalition government, which is reeling from a multibillion dollar telecoms scandal that has resulted in massive losses to the treasury. India was ranked 87th in Transparency International's 2010 ranking of nations based on the perceived level of corruption. India lies behind rival China, which is in 78th place.
