KOCHI: The Income Tax Department is scrutinising the procedures followed by Muthoot Mini, Muthoot Finance and Muthoot Fincorp for auctioning off forfeited gold. The Department, which conducted raid at the companies last week, is probing whether the NFBCs violated the norms.
Meanwhile, Income Tax officials said it would take more than one month to complete the initial investigation. “The investigation is progressing. From the initial inputs from the team engaged in the scrutiny, we suspect procedural lapses on the part of the companies while auctioning off the forfeited gold,” said an IT official. According to the officials, auctioning of the gold was never advertised by the company, and the same entities participated in the auctioning process on all occasions. “We have to check whether those who participated in the auctioning had any unholy links with the companies, for which they will be quizzed,” said the official, adding that the companies used to convert gold ornaments into bars before auctioning them.
“We are checking the RBI guidelines to verify the legality of the practice of converting ornaments into gold bars,” the official told ‘Express’. The Muthoot Group companies could not be contacted for comment.