IT Deptt detects Rs 1,500 cr ‘hidden’ financial transactions in 3 co-op banks

 

 

After cracking a whip against Sub-Registrar Offices (SROs) across the Vidarbha, the Income Tax (IT) Department swooped down on three co-operative banks - two from Nagpur and one from Buldhana. The Department’s Specialised unit Intelligence and Criminal Investigation Wing (ICIW) detected Rs 1,500 crore worth of financial transactions deliberatedly slipped through reporting channels over the course of five years. The IT officials suspect that the transactions were hidden from the reporting channels to aid black money holders.

 

The officials claimed that rows of digital transactional records were selectively absent from automatic Statement of Financial Transactions (SFT) filings. It may be mentioned here that the SFT is a reporting mechanism in India that requires specific entities to report high-value financial transactions to IT Department. The probe followed a pattern first detected in Hingna SRO in August this year, where IT officials noted widespread underreporting of property transactions by selectively ommitting some of those on the SFT portal. According to SFT rules, banks must report deposits above Rs 10 lakh in savings accounts, Rs 50 lakh in current accounts, and any significant term deposits. Yet, the surveyed cooperative banks repeatedly filed partial or incomplete reports.

 

The IT officials are also probing the role of top officials of the co-operative banks in the scam. An official stated that comparative audits between fresh bank transactions and the mandatory SFT submissions revealed thousands of crores of property transactions that had either been partially reported or omitted entirely. Quoting a rule, the IT offiical said that in addition to financial penalties, disciplinary action may be recommended for officers whose lapses facilitated underreporting. Investigators are leveraging digital analytics to trace these funds, assess the scale of underreporting, and plug gaps in reporting systems. The IT Department is now using this method of comparing the data in uploaded SFT portal versus the actual data across different types of institutions.

 

 

The Khamla Sub-Registrar Office (SRO) was surveyed recently by the ICIW after it became a focal point following a surprise inspection by Revenue Minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule. Sources said scrutiny suggests that undeclared transactions in this single office is Rs 3,000 crore over the course of five years. Investigators encountered registers, digital logs, and scanned documents that seemed at first glance ordinary yet together signalled towards unreported wealth moving through the system. Comparative audits between the ones recorded in Maharashtra’s iSarita portal and the mandatory SFT submissions revealed thousands of crores of property transactions that had either been partially reported or omitted entirely. The team raided the office and found that the mandatory system of reporting high value property transactions above Rs 30 lakh was not followed. The transactions were partially or wholly unreported to the portal, which caused large sums to move under the radar.