Income Tax department detects black money abroad after raids on textile group

The CBDT on Tuesday claimed that the Income Tax Department has detected black money worth crores stashed abroad after it raided a leading business group involved in manufacture of textile and filament yarn.

The searches that were launched on September 18 are continuing at the premises of the group including at its corporate offices in Delhi, Punjab and Kolkata.

"The group has maintained unaccounted funds of about Rs 350 crore in its foreign bank accounts and has also routed these funds back into its business through shell entities in tax havens," the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) claimed in a statement.

"The modus operandi detected was related to investment by foreign entities, under control of the group, in foreign currency convertible bonds, issued by its main concern, and subsequently under the garb of defaulting on payments, converting it into shares of the company," the CBDT said.

It said many "incriminating" documents, loose sheets, diaries, digital evidences etc. were recovered which indicate involvement of the group in routing of "unaccounted" funds back into its Indian entities and possession of foreign bank accounts that were "not reported" to the tax department.

"Substantial evidence of transactions outside the books of accounts, cash transactions in land deals, bogus expenses debited in books of accounts, unaccounted cash expenditure and accommodation entries taken from entry operators have been gathered," it claimed.

The CBDT said the department found that "foreign companies and trusts were being paid management fees for managing the unaccounted funds."

"Though there is a specific requirement of disclosing foreign assets owned/managed in the form of companies and bank accounts in schedule FA in Income Tax Returns, the same has not been disclosed by the group to the department," it alleged.

It said "details of accounts related to unexplained personal expenditure in cash were found to be meticulously maintained in one of the main offices of the company."

The statement said the department has gathered "evidence" that cash of about Rs 100 crore was generated by debiting "bogus expenditure" in company accounts and cash transactions in land deals.