New Delhi, Aug. 19 -- The Income-Tax Department on Tuesday launched a nationwide exercise to verify suspicious foreign remittances made by shell entities and other entities over the past three years, covering approximately 394 entities, including 117 located in states along India's land borders, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said. The exercise follows the identification of several entities that remitted large amounts of foreign exchange despite reporting little or no turnover, based on ground intelligence and an analysis of data on outward foreign remittances, the CBDT said in a statement. "A nationwide network of entities engaged in remitting funds abroad was uncovered during a search operation conducted on a group of fictitious charitable trusts involved in providing accommodation entries against bogus donations/contributions. Preliminary ground verification revealed that the entities making these remittances were either non-filers or were filing income-tax returns showing very small turnovers," it said. Their posted turnovers had no apparent correlation with the large amounts of money being remitted abroad and didn't appear to match the stated purposes of the remittances, like payments for freight, software imports or consulting services. Further ground-level intelligence showed the entities weren't operating from the addresses declared by them, it said. The department also found that a large number of Form 15CB certificates had been issued by a relatively small group of professionals, the CBDT said. Form 15CB is issued by a qualified chartered accountant (CA) and certifies details of certain payments to non-residents or foreign companies, including their taxability, applicable tax deducted at source (TDS) rate, TDS deduction and the nature and purpose of the remittance. Under the law, Form 15CB is required for taxable payments to a non-resident, other than a company, or to a foreign company where the payment exceeds Rs.5 lakh during a financial year. It is an event-based form and is required for each remittance that meets the prescribed conditions. The CBDT said the remitted funds were also received by a clustered group of entities. Accountants issuing Form 15CB certificates are required to verify the taxability of a foreign remittance with reference to the books of account and other relevant documents. "However, the findings raise concerns about whether adequate due diligence was carried out by the Accountants before issuing these certificates," the statement said....