Fake currency transactions zoom 250%

According to data collected by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) for various investigating agencies,the private sector banks reported the maximum number of counterfeit currency transactions — 1,15,720 transactions in 2009-08 as compared to 29,846 a year ago — followed by private foreign banks which submitted 3,572 such reports during the last fiscal year.

A total of 1,27,781 counterfeit currency reports were received last fiscal by the FIU compared to 35,730 reports during 2008-09,sources told the Indian Express adding that as of March 2010,over 1.72 lakh incidents of detection of fake currency notes with a face value of Rs 10 crore were received.

Apart from the worrying rise in fake currency notes,the source said there is an emerging trend in the country of using “bank account for lottery or employment fraud wherein victims were asked to deposit money in a particular bank account and the money was immediately withdrawn using ATMs.”

There has also been an increase in use of bank accounts by multi-level marketing companies to attract investors for depositing money with the promise of abnormal returns,the source added.

FIU is an agency under the Ministry of Finance that assists investigating agencies like ED for combating money laundering and other economic crimes.

While other trends of economic crimes — frequent cash transaction of value just under the reporting threshold; large value cheques being deposited in the bank account followed by immediate cash withdrawals and accounts being used for providing fictitious purchase bills; splitting of inward foreign remittances to collect funds in cash for avoiding fund trail; use of forged identifications for opening the account or obtaining loans,and assigning insurance policy to a third person without any clear relationship with the person — have continued to rise.

The suspicious transactions report prepared by various reporting entities including banks showed that there was lot of circulation of suspected funds not having any economic rationale,like cash deposited by an entity dealing in metals and transferred to a textile dealer and there from to a securities investor and so on,the sources added. One common factor in several suspicious transaction reports was that most of the cases pertained to Eastern India.