GOLD TRADERS wILL BE NExT GOVERNmENT TARGET
Officials have been asked to collect data of people who rushed to buy jewellery.
In continuance with the demonetisation of currency that was announced on Tuesday night, the government has taken a slew of measures to make sure that the unaccounted for money that is floating in the system is rendered useless and the hoarders are caught.
Alarmed by the news that black money hoarders have taken the help of gold jewellers to use up their black money, the government, through multiple agencies, is tracking the transactions done by the gold merchants in the last four-five days and has initiated special measures to take action against the jewellers as well as those who have bought huge quantities of gold without quoting their PAN card details in the past four days.
Officials said that the next targets in the move towards eradicating black money from the system are the gold traders who are helping black money hoarders. According to officials, the Reserve Bank of India and the Income Tax Department have been asked to collect the data of people who bought jewellery Tuesday night onwards, after government officials were made aware of the fact that people who have black money were using it to buy gold.
The officials, in order to pinpoint suspected transactions that have taken place in the last four-five days and to keep a tab on such transactions that will be undertaken in the future, has connected the Income Tax Department to the servers of the banks. Suspected cash transactions done by an individual will be recorded by the Income Tax Department. “For example, if someone deposits Rs 1 lakh in a bank, we will immediately get to know about it and then we will compare it with the individuals’ old records. We are making a list of suspected transactions and are keeping an eye on such transactions till March 2017. We will take action after seeking an explanation,” the official said.
As per an earlier arrangement, only Rs 10 lakh or more cash transaction or Rs 30 lakh or more capital investment done by individuals through the banking system were flagged by the I-T officials, but now they will see it automatically. According to highly placed sources, an unannounced video conferencing of all the senior officials of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) from all over India was called on Tuesday night, after which the senior officials were summoned to New Delhi for an urgent meeting on Wednesday morning where the modalities of preventing suspects from cheating the new system was discussed and deliberated upon.
Agencies dealing with financial crimes have been asked to generate an intelligence report on gold merchants in question, with officials stating that action against them will not be taken immediately, but by the end of this financial year.
“We have already collected some information on such jewellers and more information is coming in. The gold jewellers who do not give ‘pakka’ bill are on our radar; we want to strictly warn them not to help people in investing their black money. We want to make them know that such gold jewellers are our next target and the action will be swift and harsh. No amount of political patronage, which many of these jewellers are said to have, is going to save them. We will not let this whole action (of demonetisation of currency) go futile,” a senior government official said. Banks have been asked not to accept a large amount of Rs 500 notes from individuals that are of pre-2005 series as they will be accepted only by the RBI.