Raids in 3 Maharashtra districts detect over Rs 210 crore tax evasion

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The Income Tax Department raided 25 premises of two unnamed business groups in Maharashtra and detected huge tax evasions, besides affecting seizures, all totalling to over Rs 210 crore, an official said here on Tuesday.

The swoops took place on Dec 22 in at least 25 properties spread across Nashik, Dhule, and Nandurbar on the two entities engaged in realty development and civil constructions, said the Department.

During the raids, the I-T Department unearthed and seized many incriminating documents, loose papers and other digital evidence from both the parties pointing to their financial hanky-panky. For one entity engaged in civil constructions, the I-T Department said the documents seized reveal that they had resorted to large-scale suppression of taxable income by inflating expenses, mostly through fake claims of sub-contract expenditures and payments to unverifiable old sundry creditors.

The sleuths also detected that those sub-contracts were mostly awarded to family members or their employees who had not rendered any services in this regard, and also found evidence about the unrecorded cash expenditures incurred. As per the preliminary probe, the group has evaded income tax to the extent of Rs 150 crore due to such malpractices, the ITD said.

As far as the land developer was concerned, the central probe agency detected that a substantial part of the company's land transactions were done in cash and were not accounted for in the regular account books.

Documents proving receipt of 'non-money' on such land deals and cash loans exceeding Rs 52 crore were seized, besides unaccounted cash of over Rs 5 crore and jewellery worth around Rs 5 crore.

With the detection of these irregular deals, the I-T Department said further investigations are underway into both the groups whose identities have not been revealed.

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