MUMBAI: The Directorate General of Income Tax (investigation), Mumbai, on Friday searched 33 premises, 5 of them belonging to Shiv Sena corporator and BMC standing committee chairperson Yashwant Jadhav and his MLA wife Yamini Jadhav and the rest belonging to five allegedly influential civic contractors. Among the properties searched was the house of the Sena corporator-legislator couple in Mazgaon.
Searches will continue at some of these places on Saturday, I-T officials said.
The searches have come ahead of polls to India’s richest municipal body, BMC, scheduled this year.
I-T sources said they decided to investigate Jadhav for alleged tax evasion after receiving several corruption complaints against him, where it was alleged he had indulged in corrupt practices along with BMC contractors.
Jadhav is chairman of the powerful standing committee that has the authority to approve all big financial proposals of the civic body, which spends around Rs 12,000 crore every year on civic works it executes through private contractors. Cartels of contractors have in the past bagged contracts with the help of their political backers, with the standing committee playing a key role in awarding contracts.
The taxmen landed at the Jadhav couple’s Mazgaon home Friday morning with CRPF personnel. The search was continued when Jadhav’s party colleague and mayor Kishori Pednekar reached there to show solidarity. CRPF personnel didn’t allow her to enter the building premises.
Jadhav couple gave Rs 15cr cash to hawala dealer: I-T
The Income-Tax authorities on Friday searched 5 premises belonging to Shiv Sena corporator and BMC standing committee chairperson Yashwant Jadhav and his MLA wife Yamini Jadhav. The house of the Jadhav couple was among the places searched. Various other premises belonging to five civic contractors were also searched.
While the searches against Yashwant Jadhav were on account of complaints of tax evasion, a separate probe into his wife and Byculla Shiv Sena MLA Yamini Jadhav’s financial transactions was initiated by the I-T department last year on the basis of her 2019 assembly election affidavit. I-T authorities had, after carrying out their investigations, prepared a detailed report and requested the Election Commission to disqualify Yamini Jadhav for filing a false income declaration in her affidavit.
I-T authorities said they had found that Yamini Jadhav, along with her husband, had engaged in suspicious money transactions. In its report to the EC, the I-T had said the Jadhav couple had given Rs 15 crore in cash to a Kolkata-based hawala operator who transferred the money to them through banking channels, showing it as unsecured loans and fictitious transactions after deducting his 1% commission.
In the poll affidavit, the I-T report stated, Yamini Jadhav had declared assets worth Rs 7. 5 crore and her husband’s wealth as Rs 4. 6 crore. She had also mentioned a Rs 1 crore loan from a company, Pradhan Dealers Pvt Ltd. While investigating Pradhan Dealers, I-T authorities found it was a shell company opened by Kolkatabased hawala operator Uday Shankar Mahawar.
A few other shell companies of Mahawar had purchased shares of Pradhan Dealers at very high premium, which increased the company’s capital assets to Rs 15 crore. I-T officials recorded the statement of Mahawar, and the department said he told them Jadhav had paid him Rs 15 crore in cash through hawala channels, which he infused into Pradhan Dealers by purchasing its shares at a high premium.
Afterwards, Pradhan Dealers gave Rs 15 crore unsecured loans to a few companies controlled by the Jadhav couple, and then Mahawar transferred Pradhan Dealers’ ownership to Jadhav through a fictitious deal, along with its assets/dues.
