BHOPAL: Five day long searches at 30 premises related to a Madhya Pradesh-based real estate major and business associates in Bhopal, Indore and Bengaluru have come to an end.
The searches which started at the locations pertaining to the Bhopal-based Asnani Group and its business associates have led to the disclosure of around Rs 100 crores undisclosed income. The figure could even be higher as the detailed analysis of documents seized from the raided locations is far from complete, a senior official in the investigation wing of the Income Tax department’s MP and Chhattisgarh headquarters told The New Indian Express on Monday.
Searches which started on May 16 and were completed on Sunday have resulted in the seizure of cash and jewellery worth around Rs 1.5 crores, besides leading the IT department sleuths to at least 12 lockers at banks in Bhopal and Indore, which will be opened now by the sleuths.
“We’ve seized voluminous documents, whose analysis could make some stunning disclosures in the days to come,” the official claimed.
The associated searches at the two premises of Indore-based high profile financier Sharad Darak, who deals in hundi-chitthis has led the IT department to documents pertaining to around 12 bogus/shell companies in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal.
These bogus/shell companies have been used by wealthy entities from across the country, including the Asnani Group and its business associates to park black money and later convert it into genuine earnings from business.
“Asnani Group and its business associates alone could have evaded tax worth around Rs 25 crores by financially dealing with the bosus/shell companies being managed by Darak. Now we’re going to focus on Darak’s own dealings with other wealthy individuals/business entities through the bogus/shell companies, which might well help the department in unearthing undisclosed assets worth anther Rs 100 crores,” the IT department higher-up claimed.
In addition to the tax evasion and bogus/shell companies, the department is also zeroing on into those documents which are likely to lead to hundreds of benami properties in Bhopal in which investments have been made by rich and influential people of MP through the Asnani Group. “The process of analyzing these documents will take time, but the actual results would be startling,” the official added.