13 banks submit data on 13,140 suspicious accounts and 5800 companies

Finance Ministry has received details of suspicious post-demonetisation transactions and bank account operations of 5,800 companies whose names were struck off by the Registrar of Companies earlier this year. From a balance of Rs 22 crore during the pre-demonetisation days, these accounts saw a credit of Rs 4,573 crore post-demonetisation, almost all of which was withdrawn too.  

A Ministry statement claimed this to be a major breakthrough in the government's fight against black money and shell companies. The data, submitted by 13 banks involves 13,140 accounts. Few of the companies have been found to have more than 100 accounts to their names. The highest grosser among these is a company having 2134 accounts, followed by others having accounts in the range of 900, 300 etc, the ministry stated.

The data points out that in one of the banks, 429 companies having zero balance each as on 8th November, 2016 had deposited and withdrawn over Rs 11 crore and left again with a cumulative balance of just Rs 42,000 as at the date of freezing. In the case of another bank, more than 3000 such companies, most having multiple accounts, have been located. From having a cumulative balance of about Rs 13 crore as on 8th November, 2016, these companies have deposited and withdrawn about Rs 3800 crore, leaving a negative cumulative balance of almost Rs 200 crore at the time of freezing of their accounts.

The ministry stated that this data is only about 2.5 per cent of the total number of suspected companies that have been struck off by the government. The investigative agencies have been asked to complete necessary investigation in a time bound manner. The government has sought details of bank account operations and post-demonetisation transactions of some of the 2,09,032 suspicious companies that had been struck off the Registrar of Companies earlier this year.

The 13 banks have submitted their First Instalment of data.#casansaar (Source - Business Today)