Nagpur, 29 Oct (HS): Suspicious transactions worth Rs 1,500 crore

through 22,550 bank accounts were detected by the Income Tax Department’s

Intelligence and Criminal Investigation (I&CI) wing in Nagpur. The

transactions are linked the transactions to three cooperative banks, including

two based in Nagpur.

More than 400 cases of deposits and withdrawals above Rs 50 lakh each

and about 150 fixed deposits exceeding Rs 10 lakh. More than 20,000 account

holders earned annual interest of above Rs 2 lakh without reporting to the tax

authorities.

The IT officials found transactions worth Rs 200 crore omitted from the

statement of financial transactions, and did not report them to the Income Tax

Department. Reporting high-value transactions is mandatory under the Statement

of Financial Transactions regulations.

The IT Department will issue notices to the individuals linked to these

suspicious accounts. While cooperative banks are required to report the

transactions, the cooperative societies are exempted. This condition may have

been exploited to conceal the transactions from the IT Department’s scanner.

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Hindusthan Samachar / Ajay Vasant Mardikar