Even as the dissenting voices against demonetization calls it a ‘total failure’, the government today said that the November 8 exercise has yielded the desired results.
In what has been called a ‘breakthrough’ in the fight against black money, 13 banks have shared details of over around 5,800 shell companies with the government.
The crackdown has not only helped the government in tracing the origins of black money but also cleaning up the cash flow system.
It must be noted that earlier this year, the Registrar of Companies had struck off around 2 lakh shell firms to push government’s fight against black money.
However, the data received from them pertains to merely about 5,800 companies (out of more than 2 lakh) is in relation of 13,140 accounts. Some of the companies have been found to have more than 100 accounts in their names.
The government said that after separating the loan accounts, these companies showed a meagre balance of Rs 22.05 crore to their credit on November 8, 2016.
However, from November 9, 2016 i.e. after the announcement of demonetization, till the date of their being struck off, these companies deposited a huge amount of Rs. 4,573.87 crore in their accounts and withdrew an equally large amount of Rs 4,552 crore. With loan accounts there was a negative opening balance of Rs 80.79 crore.
Sources stress that that this data is only about 2.5% of the total number of suspected companies that have been struck off by the Centre. The investigative agencies have been asked to complete necessary investigation in a time bound manner.
