Jaipur: Unaccounted income worth Rs 1.56cr seized by I-T dept

Jaipur: The Income Tax department's investigation wing on Monday seized an unaccounted amount of around Rs 1.56 crore, most of which was found in new currency notes, from different branches of Integral Urban Co-Operative Bank Limited in Jaipur.

Out of Rs 1.56 crore, around Rs 1.38 crore was found in new denomination notes of Rs 2,000 and Rs 500. The I-T sleuths seized 6,904 currency notes of Rs 2,000 and 5 currency notes of Rs 500, while rest of the amount was recovered in currency notes of Rs 100.

The Income Tax department started investigating the Integral Urban Co-Operative Bank Limited on Friday after getting inputs from the intelligence agencies about the old currency notes and unaccounted income being exchanged for new notes there.

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The I-T sleuths found that the Integral Urban Co-Operative Bank Limited CEO Keshav Badaya operates 10 branches of the bank and he is also into the management of an educational society named St Wilfred Educational Society, which runs the St Wilfred's PG College in Jaipur.

"We received reports St. Wilfred Education society management wasn't accepting the demonetised currency notes of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 as fees from the students. After the initial probe we also found out that the chief administrative officer of Integral Urban Cooperative bank and that of St.Wilfred is the same person. It was found that by keeping records of total cash intact they were changing the older currency notes with the fresh currency notes from the bank," said a senior officer of investigating wing of Income Tax.

"It suggested that the owner of the college and the bank was converting his black money into white through the bank," the officer added.

"We have seized an unaccounted income of nearly Rs 1.56 crore which includes 6,904 currency notes in the denomination of Rs 2000, 5 currency notes in denomination of Rs 500 and rest in the denomination of Rs 100," the officer added.

Apart from the cash, the I-T department has also recovered gold and silver worth nearly Rs 46 lakh from three unclaimed lockers of the bank.

"On being asked for the keys of the three lockers, the bank officials didn't come up with a proper reply. Thereafter, we broke those lockers and seized 2 kg gold and some silver that worth Rs 45 lakh stored in them," the officer added.

The officials also said that the CEO Badaya was unavailable in person as well as over the phone for talks.