More than 160,000 companies been deregistered and a series of actions are being taken against shell firms, Corporate Affairs Minister Arun Jaitley told the Lok Sabha on Friday. His response was to a query on whether a large number of shell companies and entities that are primarily used as conduits for dealing in black money and hawala transactions have come to the notice of the government. Out of the 162,618 companies that have been struck-off the register, the registration of 33,000 were cancelled by RoC (Mumbai), according to a written reply by minister of state for corporate affairs Arjun Ram Meghwal. The Business Standard, new Delhi, 22th July 2017