De-registered companies having mind boggling number of bank A/Cs: Banks tell Centre

New Delhi, Oct 6: Pre-demonetisation, one single shell company had as much as 2,134 accounts in various banks without having any justifications whereas many others had accounts in the range of 900, 300 each. According to the first trench of data related to de-registered companies, submitted by 13 banks to the Government, the banks have informed that, after separating the loan accounts, these companies were having a meagre balance of Rs 22.05 crore to their credit on 8th November, 2016. However, from November 9, 2016 i.e. after the announcement of demonetisation, till the date of their being struck off, these companies have altogether deposited a huge amount of Rs 4,573.87 crore in their accounts and withdrawn an equally large amount of Rs 4,552 crore. With loan accounts, there was a negative opening balance of Rs 80.79 crore. Disturbing factors have been identified of companies having multiple accounts with miniscule or negative balance as on 8th November, 2016 which have then deposited and withdrawn amounts going in several crores from these accounts. The accounts were thereafter again left as dormant accounts with paltry balance. As mentioned earlier, this exercise of swindling the authorities was carried-out post demonetization till the companies were struck off. In some cases, certain companies have gone more adventurous and made deposits and withdrawals even after being struck off. For example, in one of the Bank, 429 companies having zero balance each as on 8th November, 2016 have deposited and withdrawn over Rs 11 crore and left again with a cumulative balance of just Rs 42,000 as at the date of freezing. Similarly in the case of another bank, more than 3,000 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 From having a cumulative balance of about Rs 13 crore as on 8th November, 2016, these companies have deposited and withdrawn about Rs 3,800 crore, leaving a negative cumulative balance of almost Rs 200 crore at the time of freezing of their accounts. According to a Finance Ministry statement, 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 huge money game played by these companies may well be the tip of an iceberg of corruption, black money and black deeds of these and many more of their brethren. The investigative agencies have been asked to complete necessary investigation in a time bound manner. The country and honest citizen may well look forward to a more cleaner tomorrow. These data have provided other vital information too to the Government regarding the bank account operations and post-demonetisation transactions of some of the 2,09,032 suspicious companies that had been struck off the Register of Companies earlier this year. According to Finance Ministry, these 13 banks have submitted their first installment of data. The data received from them pertains to merely about 5,800 companies (out of more than 2 lakh that were struck off) involving 13,140 accounts. The data are pertaining to the pre-demonetisation account balances and transactions conducted from the accounts of these companies during the demonetisation period is even more startling. UNI