Further tightening the noose around shell companies, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) has disqualified more than two lakh directors within a span of 15 days or not filing their financial statements or annual returns for two consecutive years in violation of the provisions of Companies Act, 2013.
After the recent crackdown, the total number of directors disqualified by the ministry has reached 3,00,000.
According to the ministry officials, a total of 3,19,637 directors were disqualified, while 2,17,239 companies were deregistered.
A senior official of the department said that this data is only from five banks, and the number is expected to go up once they receive data from 30 banks.
He also said that the numbers they got from banks was very surprising, adding that one shell company has been found to have as many as 2,100 bank accounts.
"These companies are on MCA radar and investigation is going on. We are trying to track down the modus operandi of these companies," the MCA official said.
The official also informed that the ministry wrote a letter to the Indian Banks Association (IBA) on September 8, asking for a reply within a month.
