The Income Tax department found 12 fake accounts in the Krishna Nagar branch of Axis Bank in Delhi, on Friday.
The department was able to trace these shell companies as black money evaders had used multiple branches of Axis Bank for transactions.
The Income Tax Department raided two Axis Bank branches in Delhi and Noida on Thursday. The raid at the Noida Sector 51 branch led to the discovery of accounts of 20 fake companies with over Rs 60 crore in them. The Connaught Place branch was also raided by the department.
This comes days after another Axis Bank branch in Delhi's Chandni Chowk was raided and 44 fake accounts with Rs 100 crore in them were found.
According to CNN News18, banks are going to get a showcause notice from the court.
Speaking to the media, Axis Bank’s retail head, Rajiv Anand said:
We’ve employed KPMG to help us investigate the case. We have also significantly increased our communication with our staff. We have zero tolerance for such practice. If the brand name has been tarnished then we will certainly work very hard to rebuild it.
Earlier, Axis Bank had responded to the illegal activities and said:
We applied all our analytical capability to identify accounts that might have exhibited suspicious activity since demonetisation. The Bank has also taken the unprecedented step of temporarily suspending some of these accounts under question.
Axis Bank has been in the spotlight in recent weeks for the raids being carried out on it and the fake accounts, black money held with it coming to light.
The RBI had said, even after several raids of the IT Department, that they will not be cancelling the bank’s license and that it’s “safe”.
Bank managers were also found to have been involved with the fake accounts and reportedly took commission in gold, for the conversion of black money.
(With inputs from ANI.)
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