BHUBANESWAR: Income Tax [IT] officials on Friday inspected the transactions of the main branch of the Balasore Bhadrak Central Cooperative Bank [BBCCB] amid suspicions that shady transactions have been taking place in it since the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes.
A senior manager of the bank denied that this was a raid. He said it seemed to be an inspection of transactions to verify whether unaccounted money has been flowing into Jan Dhan accounts across the country. Some Rs 21,000 crore of slush cash is reported to have been deposited in Jan Dhan accounts demonetisation.
The manager said BBCCB does not have any Jan Dhan accounts.
Three tax sleuths arrived at the bank at about 11 am and examined documents relating to transactions made since November 10. They inspected deposit slips, online transactions and documents submitted against high-value deposits. The raid continued till evening.
Cooperative banks have been barred by the Reserve Bank of India [RBI] from handling Rs 500 and Rs 1000 denominations 10 days ago.
“We cooperated with the IT officials and provided them the details they sought. We have received more deposits through cooperative societies than from individual account holders. We have kept the PAN details against high-value deposits,” he said.
Sources said before the RBI restrictions were clamped, BBCCB had collected deposits of around Rs 59 crore in five days between November 10 and 14.
The bank has 30 branches and 249 cooperative societies besides two Large-Area Multi Purpose Societies (LAMPS) in Balasore and Bhadrak districts. The bank, which does not have a core banking system, has around seven lakh accounts.
Cooperative banks across Odisha have threatened to launch a protest against the RBI guidelines restricting them from accepting deposits of old notes. They, however, postponed the protest after RBI promised to provide them financial assistance through Nabard for lending to farmers.
The IT sleuths also went to the Balasore Urban Cooperative Bank and collected cash transaction details. They are expected to visit some other cooperative societies soon.
On Wednesday, IT sleuths had conducted a raid at Puri Urban Co-operative Bank.