I-T raids discover Rs 60 crore

New Delhi: Income tax (I-T) department on Thursday unearthed Rs 60 crore in 20 fake accounts in Axis bank’s Noida branch.

I-T was on trail of a jeweller in Noida who had sold gold bricks worth Rs 600 crore after demonetisation and has accounts in the Axis bank’s sector 51 Noida branch.

I-T department during its searches found Rs 60 crores in 20 accounts of as many shell companies. I-T team was scanning the records to trace the directors of these companies. Some reports suggested that the bank accounts were opened in the names of labourers.

According to sources, I-T conducted raids on two branches of Axis bank on Thursday — Noida and Connaught Place, New Delhi. I-T department has found suspicious transactions in Axis banks Connaught Place branch too.

In a statement Axis Bank said that it has rigorous compliance procedures and has also gone ahead and applied all its analytic capability to identify accounts that might have exhibited suspicious activity since demonetisation.

“We would like to add that the investigative agencies have identified some potentially suspect accounts for which the bank had already filed Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs) in the past with FIU-IND. Apart from this the bank has also files additional STRs with FIU in this period proactively,” said the bank.

It said that bank “understand that the visit by the investigative agencies to our branches has been pursuant to the cash transaction report’s (CTR) and STRs filed by the bank under the extant KYC and  Anti-Money Laundering norms as applicable to the bank.”

The bank said that it has also taken the unprecedented step of temporarily suspending some of these accounts. “Axis Bank is committed to maintaining the strongest operational controls and has no tolerance for undesirable behaviours that circumvent laid out processes,” it added.

It may be recalled that the ED had arrested two Axis Bank managers of the Kashmiri Gate branch for helping in money laundering after November 8.

I-T had also conducted survey on Chandni Chowk branch of Axis bank last week and had found several fake accounts.