KOZHIKODE: A probe by central agencies into the activities of Kalliyath Group, a major business house in Kerala alleged to have links with the controversial Peace International School, has revealed the group laundered crores of black money between November 9 and 17.
The Financial Intelligence Unit has also launched an inquiry into the real estate deals of the group which allegedly sold properties worth crores to foreign investors.
Their activities came under the scanner after the Income Tax (IT) Department exposed largescale financial fraud by the group post demonetisation.
Agencies have frozen all bank accounts of the group and statements of the entire staff are being recorded. The bank accounts of individuals with whom the group had struck deals are also being monitored. As per the probe details accessed by ‘Express’, between November 9 and 17, Kalliyath had done business transactions worth crores using banned Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes.
The shady operations from November 2016 were unearthed during a probe by an investigation team led by principal director Benny John, Joint Director (Intelligence) Iyaz Ahamed, Deputy Director Ben Mathew Varkey and Income Tax Officer (Intelligence) Krishnakanth K. According to official sources, the account details of the three companies under the group were scrutinised and raids conducted at 37 of its offices spread across southern states.
Officers said around 50 per cent of the business deals were done without proper bills to evade Central Excise and Sales Taxes.
“Kalliyath was literally running a parallel account ledger system for the past couple of years while presenting another account book before the government,” said a senior officer.
The three companies under the group were Kairali TMT owned by Abdul Gafoor, Kalliyath TMT owned by Noor Mohammed Noorsha and Bharathi TMT owned by Yasar Arafath.
Noor Muhammed is the managing trustee of Peace International School. While Kairali has corporate office in Kozhikode, Kalliyath’s is in Kochi and Bharathi’s in Palakkad.
The secret accounting system was run in the offices of Kairali at Palakkad and Kozhikode while for Kalliyath TMT, it was in Palakkad and Kochi.
According to officers, Kairali and Kalliyath had done transactions in tranches of `10 lakh to `50 lakh between November 9 and November 17.
“The verification is still on. So far, we have detected financial fraud to the tune of `200 crore. A detailed report will be submitted to the Finance Ministry soon and a future course of action will be chalked out,” the officers said.
However, when queried on this issue, one of the directors at the Kalliyath office in Kozhikode denied the charges levelled by the IT Department saying all their accounts were transparent.