New Delhi:The Income Tax Department said on Friday that its verification process at Tamilnad Mercantile Bank has revealed that “statements of Specified Financial Transactions (SFTs) were not filed in respect of cash deposits of over 2,700 crore involving more than 10,000 accounts, specified credit card payments involving total transaction value of over Rs 110 crore, dividend distributed amounting to more than Rs 200 crore, and shares issued worth over Rs 600 crore”.
The Income Tax officials had on Tuesday conducted an inspection at the head office of Tamilnad Mercantile Bank (TMB) at Tuticorin for the verification of statutory compliances by the private sector lender.
In a statement issued on Friday, the I-T department said, “Verification of a prominent bank based out of Tamil Nadu was carried out to address reporting entity compliance issues.”
It said that during the course of verification, several discrepancies were found and it was seen that the bank had not filed SFTs in certain cases and in some others, had not filed complete/accurate particulars.
“SFTs were not filed in respect of cash deposits of over Rs 2,700 crore involving more than 10,000 accounts, specified credit card payments involving total transaction value of over Rs 110 crore, dividend distributed of more than Rs 200 crore and shares issued of over Rs 600 crore,” it said.
It further said that the SFTs already filed by the bank were found incomplete in several respects.
“The bank had failed to report major transactions which included interest paid of more than Rs 500 crore, time deposits, cash deposits and withdrawals in current accounts, etc,” the I-T department said.
It said that its verification also revealed defective filing of Form 61B for automatic exchange of information (AEOI) about account holders “residents” of other countries.
