Jail for renting bank accounts: Income Tax department

New Delhi: Warning people against depositing their unaccounted old currency in someone else’s bank account, the tax department has decided to slap charges under the newly enforced Benami Transactions Act against violators that carries a penalty, prosecution and rigorous jail term of a maximum seven years.

In a related development, official sources said that the department has detected over Rs 200 crore in undisclosed income after it conducted over 80 surveys and about 30 searches in cases of suspicious usage of the scrapped currency. About Rs 50 crore has also been seized in these operations since November 8, they said, across various states.

The sources said the taxman has initiated a country-wide operation to identify suspect bank accounts where huge cash deposits have been made post November 8, when government demonetised the Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes.

Such instances where the suspicion is found to be true will be prosecuted under the Benami Property Transactions Act, 1988, applicable on both movable and immovable property, that has been enforced from November 1 this year.

They said the Act empowers the taxman to confiscate and prosecute both the depositor and the person whose illegal money he or she has “adjusted” in their account.

“The CBDT has asked the I-T department to closely monitor all such transactions where people are using bank accounts of other persons for hiding and converting into white their black money,” a source said.