Income Tax investigators revealed that more than 1,200 new accounts were opened over past one month
Around 1,200 suspicious accounts with Rs 120 crore in deposits have been found by the Income Tax department at a Delhi-based cooperative bank, authorities said, suggesting a huge scam to convert scrapped notes.
For five days, authorities said they conducted searches at the head office of Jain Co-operative Bank at Delhi's Daryaganj area and all its other branches at Karol Bagh, Shahdara, Gandhi Nagar and Laxmi Nagar.
According to the Income Tax department, the entire board of the bank met in the office the bank's chairman in Daryaganj on November 12, three days after the government announced it was banning old 500 and 1,000-rupee notes in an effort to curb corruption and black money.
The meeting was attended by the chairman Rajesh Kumar Jain, vice-chairman Pradeep Jain, two independent directors and nine other directors, sources said.
During this meeting, the officials allegedly formed a plan to circumvent the limit of Rs 4,500 placed on the exchange of old currency by the RBI, tax officials said.
This was to be done allegedly by filling forms using identity cards of people and daily quotas for exchange of demonetised cash were decided for everyone from the chairman (Rs 5,00,000) to the peon (Rs 4,000), investigators said.
Each person was told to arrange fake identity proofs, to get the amount of cash they were allowed to exchange.
According to the investigators, no formal records were drawn for this meeting and even the camera installed in the room of the chairman was switched off for that day.
An officer was allegedly fixed by the chairman for this purpose and the cashier was asked to hand over new currency to him who in turn gave it to the officials concerned, tax officers said.
Despite the RBI issuing instructions on November 15 to not allow exchange of old notes at cooperative banks, it continued at this bank till the 23rd of the month and the bank has converted more than Rs 3.5 crore, sources said.
Income Tax investigators also revealed that more than 1,200 new accounts were opened over the past one month and many of these accounts are 'benami' or nameless accounts. The bank took deposits worth Rs 120 crore during this time.
Sources in Income Tax investigation team also said that they found CCTV footage was deliberately destroyed by the management to wipe out evidence and many members of the staff have been shifted to different branches to make it difficult to trace them.
Officials from the bank declined to comment.