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The Centre has received vital information on the bank accounts of some of the shell companies it deregistered, with as many as 13 banks submitting their first set of data.
The Ministry of Corporate Affairs had requested the Indian Banks’ Association to obtain information on the bank account operations and post-demonetisation transactions of the 2.09 lakh deregistered companies.
Thirteen banks have now directly shared the information with the Ministry. However, data received from them pertain to only 13,140 accounts of about 5,800 of the 2.09 lakh de-registered rms. After being struck off, the operation of the bank accounts of these 2,09,032 suspicious companies were restricted to discharge of their liabilities.
The data revealed that a few of the companies have more than a hundred accounts in their names. The list topper had 2,134 accounts, followed by others with hundreds of accounts, the release said.
Data pertaining to pre-demonetisation account balances and transactions conducted via the accounts of these companies during the note ban period are even more startling. It was found that after considering the loan accounts, these companies had a meagre balance of ₹22.05 crore to their credit on November 8, 2016.
However, from November 9, 2016 — the day after demonetisation was announced — till the day they were struck off, these companies deposited a total of ₹4,574 crore in their accounts, and withdrew ₹4,552 crore. With loan accounts, there was a negative opening balance of ₹81 crore. Thereafter, the accounts remained dormant, with paltry balances.
In one of the banks, 429 companies, each having zero-balance on November 8, 2016, deposited and withdrew over ₹11 crore, and were left with a cumulative balance of ₹42,000 on the date their accounts were frozen.
Similarly, in the case of another bank, more than 3,000 companies were detected with most having multiple accounts. From having a cumulative balance of about ₹13 crore as on November 8, 2016, these companies deposited and withdrew about ₹3,800 crore, leaving a cumulative negative balance of almost ₹200 crore at the time of the freezing of their accounts.
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