Income Tax Department conducts search,seizure operation in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry
Oct 18, 2023
Chennai (Tamil Nadu) [India], October 18 : The Income Tax Department conducted search and seizure operations in the cases of two groups, primarily running educational institutions engaged in professional courses. These groups were carrying out businesses such as distilleries, pharmaceuticals, hospitals and hotels.
About 100 premises were covered during the search action in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry on October 5.
Many incriminating evidence in the form of loose sheets, hard copies of documents, and digital data have been found and seized. The modus operandi of tax evasion detected in running such educational institutions includes concealment of fee receipts, bogus claim of disbursement of scholarships, as per the release.
Large scale evidence about receipt of fee which are unrecorded in the books of account and claim of non-genuine disbursement of scholarships have been seized. The preliminary analysis, so far, has resulted in collecting evidences for such unaccounted fee receipts of more than Rs 400 crore and incorrect claims of disbursement of scholarships to the tune of Rs 25 crore.
In one of the groups, seized evidence indicates that trust was utilizing the services of agents for garnering students, for which unaccounted commission payment of about Rs 25 crore has been made.
In the distillery business run by one of the groups, it has been found that bogus expenditure has been claimed for about Rs 500 crore towards purchase of inputs such as, bottles, flavours, Extra Neutral Alcohol and freight charges.
Such purchases are not corroborated with purchase invoices or entries in stock registers. Several pieces of evidence have been recovered showing that cheques have been issued to various non-existent entities and the same have been received back in the form of cash for making unaccounted investments and for other expenditures which are not allowable as business expenses.
The seized documents suggest that amount exceeding Rs 300 crore has been diverted from trusts either for personal expenses of the trustees or for deployment in diverse businesses. It includes payments made by one of the groups for acquiring an industrial entity in Andhra Pradesh.
So far, the searches have resulted in the seizure of unaccounted cash amounting to Rs 32 crore and gold bullion of Rs 28 crore, thereby aggregating to Rs 60 crore.
Further investigations are in progress.
