NEW DELHI: Income Tax officials conducted search operations at over a dozen premises of Chinese smartphone companies and their contract manufactures. Major players such as Oppo, Xiaomi, and OnePlus are being covered in the searches, which according to a senior official, may be involved in concealing their profits to avoid taxes.
According to an executive of a smart-phone company, the search began on Monday morning in which they were asked to submit their smartphones and personal computers for inspection. Official said that they are analysing the data to check for any wrongdoings. The raids were primarily conducted in offices located in and around Delhi NCR and Bengaluru.
Meanwhile, Oppo, in a statement said, “As an invested partner in India, we highly respect and abide by the law of the land. We will continue to fully cooperate with authorities concerned as per procedure.” Queries sent to Xiaomi and OnePlus were not answered.
This is not the first time when authorities are conducting search operations at premises of Chinese tech firms. Telecom vendor ZTE was searched rigorously by IT officials while Enforcement Directorate (ED) recently penalised distributing partners of a leading phone maker. In the last two years, the relationship between India and China has been anything but steady.
Not only India banned over 100 apps, including PUBG and TikTok, which had its origin in China, it continues to discourage China’s participation in many sectors. Despite this, Chinese companies Xiaomi, Realme, Vivo and Oppo control over 60% of Indian smartphone market.