The central bank also said that defunct currency up to any amount can be deposited under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana black money amnesty scheme.

MUMBAI: The Reserve Bank of India announced that deposits of more than Rs 5,000 in old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes can be made only once per account until December 30 in what appears to be a further crackdown on attempts to launder unaccounted cash through bank accounts.Customers depositing more thanRs 5,000 will have to explain why they didn’t do so before."The credit in such cases shall be afforded only after questioning tenderer, on record, in the presence of at least two officials of the bank, as to why this could not be deposited earlier and receiving a satisfactory explanation,” RBI said in a notification on Monday. "The explanation should be kept on record to facilitate an audit trail at a later stage. An appropriate flag also should be raised in CBS to that effect so that no more tenders are allowed.” CBS or core banking system refers to the technology backbone.The move is aimed at checking money laundering, a senior finance ministry official told ET . "Large deposits cannot be made multiple times in bank accounts. People can deposit up to Rs 5,000, on which there is no restriction,” he said. "This is essentially to prevent cash aggregators using the multiple-deposit route to launder money.”At the time of the demonetisation announcement on November 8, the public had been asked not to rush to deposit old notes as there was time to do so until December 30.Post the decision, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday said no questions will be asked if any amount of junked currency is deposited in one go but repeated deposits may raise queries. Explaining the rationale behind the move, Jaitley said all exemptions to certain sectors and utilities, which had been allowed to accept the banned currency post demonetisation, ended last week and all those in possession of the old notes are supposed to deposit them with banks."Anyone who has old currency notes is not allowed to trade in them. He can only go and deposit them with banks,” he said. "This is going to be another logistical nightmare for bankers — imagine when we need to question even genuine customers for their deposits when time and again we had assured customers that there is time till December 30,” a banker said.The change of heart seems to have occurred as nearly all the notes withdrawn from circulation have been deposited with suspiciously large sums going into some accounts. "We had noticed a surge in lot of suspicious transactions and huge deposits in small savings bank accounts, the latest move will help curb this surge,” a banker said.RBI has also directed banks to accept pre-2005 currency notes after receiving complaints from the public that banks were declining them. These notes have been in the process of being gradually phased out by the central bank since January 2014.The central bank also said that defunct currency up to any amount can be deposited under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana black money amnesty scheme."It has been decided to place certain restrictions on deposits of scrapped bank notes into bank accounts while encouraging the deposits of the same under the Taxation and Investment Regime for the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY), 2016,” RBI said.Under the PMGKY scheme, deposits of unaccounted cash will be subject to 50% tax and penalty while 25% will go into a four-year, interest-free Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Scheme. In a gazette notification, the government also said that money deposited at district cooperative banks between November 10 and 14 will be scrutinised. "Complete audit check of the veracity of the know your customer documents of the said individual or the members of the said primary agricultural credit societies shall be conducted by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development,” the notification said.