Chennai: In raid after raid income-tax officials have been digging out large stashes in bundles of Rs 2,000 notes in the last few weeks clearly indicating that black money hoarders have managed to charge their undisclosed assets to new pink notes of Rs 2,000. The RBI would like to think it is magenta, but it looks more pink in the eyes of the people with even Amitabh Bachchan quipping that his movie is now more popular thanks to the pink notes.
Thursday’s seizure of Rs 10 crore worth new notes from the premises linked to J. Sekhar Reddy, a TTD board member and PWD contractor in Chennai, once again proving that those with influence have managed to change huge quantities of money with the connivance of bank officials. And this while ordinary people are forced to stand in the Sun in front of banks to get their Rs 4,000 or so from their hard earned money deposited in the bank.
Income-tax officials have been freely hinting that bankers have been using details of hundreds of accounts holders in the banks — and they could very well belong to you and me — to exchange notes against those accounts and help black money holders to change currency notes in large scale. The commission for doing this might go up to 20 per cent. As these transactions against your account details cannot be reflected in the account book, bankers use account details from know your customer (KYC) dossiers in order to exchange old notes into new ones.
“You will never know if the banker had used your identity or bank details to exchange old notes belonging to somebody else as it was never recorded in your account statement. By the time government came to know about it and started taking action against bankers, the damage was already done,” an I-T official noted. This is how crores of rupees in bundles of new pink coloured Rs 2,000 notes ended up in the hands of influential people while aam aadmi waited in queues patiently every day to withdraw money from banks, the official noted.
The Chennai police while probing a robbery of Rs 25 lakh, had exposed major chinks in the banking industry when they arrested four bankers on November 20 for allegedly helping to launder lakhs of rupees for selected customers.
