Over 60,000 persons Under suspicion: I-T department

New Delhi: Income-tax department on Friday said that it is launching  the second phase of Operation Clean Money under which over 60,000 persons,  including 1,300 high risk persons will be investigated for excessive cash sales during demonetisation period.

Also over 6,000 transactions of high value property purchase and 6,600 cases of outward remittances will be investigated under OCM. “All cases where no response is received shall also be subjected to detailed enquiries,” it said. The high risk categories identified include businesses claiming cash sales as the source of cash deposits which is found to be excessive compared to their past profile or industry norms, large cash deposits made by government or Public Sector Unit (PSUs) employees, persons who have undertaken high value purchases and persons who have used shell entities for layering of funds.

IT launched first phase of Operation Clean Money on January  31, 2017 to leverage technology for e-verification of cash deposits made during the demonetisation period. In first phase around 18 lakh people who entered into cash transactions that did not match with their tax profile, were identified and requested for on-line responses. “Some 9.46 lakh persons responded on pre-defined parameters of sources of the cash deposits. Online queries were raised in 35,000 cases and on-line verification was completed in more than 7,800 cases,”  I-T department said.