Three of the four members of the newly constituted Bank Board Bureau (BBB) have ICICI Bank links. Only the newly-appointed BBB chairman B P Sharma is not known to have any connections with the largest private sector bank. New member P Pradip Kumar, former Managing Director of State Bank of India, was reportedly on the three-member advisory board of Singapore-based Avista Advisory, founded by Rajiv Kochhar, till earlier this week. It may be noted that Rajiv Kochhar is Ms. Chanda Kochhar's brother-in-law and is being questioned by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with links to ICICI Bank's borrowers. Officials say that it speaks of the functioning of the FinMin that of all people, it should select one public sector banker with close and direct links to a company under investigation for the important post on the BBB. The connection of other new members to ICICI is seen harmless. Pradip Shah started out as a credit officer in ICICI during its days as a development finance institution before going on to help set up Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC). Vedika Bhandarkar was also in ICICI in various positions, the last of which was as vice president ICICI Securities. Interestingly, even previous BBB chairman, Vinod Rai, had an ICICI Bank connection - he was a director of the bank.