Corporate Affairs Ministry and Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has signed an MoU for automatic and regular exchange of information to curb the menace of shell companies, money laundering and black money in the country. <br/><br/>This will also prevent misuse of corporate structure by shell companies for various illegal purposes. The MoU will enable sharing of specific information such as PAN number data in respect of corporates, Income Tax returns of corporates, financial statements filed with the Registrar by corporates, audit reports and statements of financial transactions received from banks relating to corporates. The information shared will pertain to both Indian corporates as well as foreign corporates operating in India.<br/><br/>In addition to regular exchange of data, CBDT and MCA will also exchange with each other any information available in their respective databases, for the purpose of carrying out scrutiny, inspection, investigation and prosecution.<br/><br/>The Ministry said, a Data Exchange Steering Group also has been constituted for the initiative, which will meet periodically to review the data exchange status and take steps to further improve the effectiveness of the two agencies.