NEW DELHI: The government has expanded the ambit of its fight against black money and is looking to curb institutional money laundering by shutting down "dormant" companies, suspected to be anywhere between 6 to 7 lakh. Many of these firms had carried out high-value transactions and deposited huge amounts of cash in banks following demonetisation of high-value currency notes.Cleansing the list of 15 lakh registered companies is in itself a huge task since the suspected entities constitute more than 40% of the total registered firms in India. These firms had managed to remain under the radar till now by not filing annual returns with the Registrar of Companies (RoC). The CBDT has prepared an integrated databank of suspected shell companies and entry operators and is in the process of matching recent banking transactions with other suspect "dormant" companies. The data also includes information gathered from property registration, suspicious transaction reports shared by the Financial Intelligence Unit and foreign bank accounts.

Source: Times of India February 27, 2017 22:16 UTC