A posse of income tax officials raided Shri Vardhman Sakh Sahkari Sanstha Maryadit – an urban cooperative bank in Ujjain Madhya Pradesh and found it involved in large scale money laundering activities mainly through tax evasion.
Sources say, the UCB has carried out high value transactions exceeding Rs. 300 crore in less than three years. Scores of local merchants and businessmen were cynically using the bank for their nefarious purposes, sources add.
Experts say co-operative societies are using their own accounts with commercial banks to acquire multi-city cheque books, which are treated as local cheques, irrespective of the city where they are deposited. .
In some cases, the cheques issued by co-operative credit societies are passed off as demand drafts. There could be domestic money laundering, too. These transactions may have been carried out to evade tax, and because of this the income-tax I-T authority has got involved in the investigation.
