The Income Tax (I-T) Department has found unaccounted income exceeding ₹150 crore during a search operation on two Tamil Nadu-based business groups on July 20, 2022.
One of the groups is engaged in real estate and the other in contracts related to roads and railway construction. The operation covered more than 30 premises, located in and around Madurai and Chennai. During the search, unaccounted cash exceeding ₹14 crore, unaccounted gold and jewellery valued at over ₹10 crore, incriminating evidence such as documents and digital data were seized.
In the case of the real estate group, evidence revealed they had indulged in large-scale tax evasion, accepting huge unaccounted cash. The group was using a software to maintain parallel set of books of unaccounted cash transactions.
The group involved in the construction contracts was involved in large-scale tax evasion by debiting bogus sub-contract expenses and inflation of purchases of various raw materials through self-made vouchers. The contract amounts were paid to bogus sub-contractors through banking channels and after withdrawal, the cash was returned to the assessees.
Further investigations are on.
