The government has identified over 2.25 lakh companies and 7,191 Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs) which have not filed requisite financial statement for 2015-16 and 2016-17, and they may be struck off during the current financial year, said Ministry of Finance in a statement.
The Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) has already struck off over 2.26 lakh companies for non- filing of financial statements or annual returns for a continuous period of 2 years or more, said the statement.
Also, over 3.09 lakh directors were disqualified for not filing financial statements or annual returns for preceding 3 years (2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16).
“For the second drive to be launched during 2018-19), 2,25,910 companies have been further identified for being struck off under section 248 of the Companies Act, 2013…for non-filing of financial statements for 2015-16 and 2016-17,” the statement said.
Also, 7,191 LLPs have been identified for action under section 75 of the LLP Act, 2008 due to non-filing of financial statements for the stated years, it said. These companies and LLPs will be given an opportunity of being heard by way of notices regarding their default and the proposed action. Appropriate action will be taken after considering their response, the statement said.
A task force headed by Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia and MCA Secretary Injeti Srinivas was set up in February 2017 to check the menace of shell companies through a coordinated, multi-agency approach. The task force has compiled a database of shell companies and classified them into 3 categories– Confirmed list, Derived list and Suspect list. The Confirmed List has a total of 16,537 confirmed shell companies on the basis of the information received from the various law enforcement agencies of the companies found to be involved in illegal activities.
The ‘derived list’ has 16,739 companies identified on the basis of 100 per cent common directorships with the confirmed shell companies. The ‘suspect list’ has 80,670 suspected shell companies and has been drawn up by SFIO using certain red flag Indicators.
The Task Force has identified certain red flag Indicators, which will be used to identify more shell companies, the statement said.
The Task Force has directed all member law enforcement agencies to send the details of action taken against chartered accountants by them to ICAI, it said. The ex- directors / authorised signatories of the struck-off companies have been restricted from operating the bank accounts of these companies and they cannot withdraw any amount from these bank accounts, other than for specified purposes, till the company is restored u/s 252 of the Companies Act, it said.
The Ministry of Corporate affairs will also be launching a public awareness campaign soon to make the public aware of the need to get the registrations of their defunct companies cancelled themselves, it said.