NCB Mer­chant Bank (T&T) said yes­ter­day the US$2 mil­lion that was seized by T&T Cus­toms and Ex­cise of­fi­cials last month is the prop­er­ty of the bank and “re­lates to a trans­ac­tion con­duct­ed in the or­di­nary course of busi­ness with an­oth­er reg­u­lat­ed fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion.”

In a news re­lease re­spond­ing to a news­pa­per re­port on the for­eign ex­change cash seizure, NCB Mer­chant Bank said the trans­ac­tion was ini­ti­at­ed and ex­e­cut­ed in ac­cor­dance with the bank’s es­tab­lished op­er­a­tional pro­ce­dures and all ap­plic­a­ble le­gal, reg­u­la­to­ry and se­cu­ri­ty re­quire­ments.

The fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion said, “The cash forms part of a le­git­i­mate in­ter-in­sti­tu­tion­al trans­ac­tion and was in­tend­ed to tran­sit with­in the NCB Group pur­suant to es­tab­lished busi­ness arrange­ments. Im­por­tant­ly, while the phys­i­cal cash would be tran­sit­ing, the un­der­ly­ing val­ue would not. Up­on com­ple­tion of the tran­sit process, NCB Mer­chant Bank would be ful­ly com­pen­sat­ed in US dol­lars for the cash, en­sur­ing that the bank’s fi­nan­cial po­si­tion and eco­nom­ic in­ter­est in the trans­ac­tion re­main pro­tect­ed through­out.”