In recent days , scores of cooperative banks across the country have been found involved in money laundering activities in a big way by allowing thousands of high value financial transactions without PAN. The problem has assumed such proportion that the competent authorities are at work following the trail of such transactions.
It is worth mentioning that the PAN has long been mandatory for banking transactions exceeding Rs. 50,000.
A Mangaluru – based urban cooperative has been found to have permitted over three thousand transactions without PAN involving Rs. 4,400 crore, reports Hindu.
IT sources say this is just the tip of the iceberg, According to them, most of the 36,000 credit cooperative societies and about 7,000 cooperative banks that operate in Karnataka have permitted such illegal transactions.
A source says of the 15 lakh transactions without PAN in cooperative banks across India, 11 lakh were reported from branches based in Bengaluru. Karnataka is estimated to have close to 800 cooperative banks with each doing transactions of around Rs. 5,000 crore annually, source added.