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STAFF REPORTER
GUWAHATI: The Income Tax (IT) department has detected documents relating to out-of-books (illegal) transactions of Rs 150 crore during its recent search-and-survey action in cases of leading coal traders across Assam. The search and survey actions were carried out at 21 locations in Guwahati, Digboi, Margherita and Delhi.
The main allegations against the coal traders are that they routed entries of more than Rs 23 crore and Rs 62 crore in the form of non-genuine share capital and non-genuine unsecured loans respectively, through certain Kolkata-based shell companies. All this was done by suppression of its true net profit.
Sources in the IT department said that during the course of the search action, it has been established that they engaged in out-of-books transactions. Handwritten documents/ diaries regarding cash transactions have been recovered which are not reflected in the regular books of accounts. Such transactions detected so far across all the locations combined is upwards of Rs150 crore, of which payments made of a total of more than Rs100 crore have been found to be violative of various sections of the Income-tax Act-1961. "Such seized documents are voluminous and are being investigated further and no cogent explanation regarding the same was provided," said sources.
In the office of the Kolkata-based shell company acquired by one of the entities of the coal traders, no book of accounts and mandated documents were found, proving that it was a bogus entity used to only route unaccounted income of the group.
Unexplained cash of approximately Rs 3.53 crore, found during the search operations, have been seized by the Department. Cash investments in Share Capital during the demonetization period were also detected. Further investigations are on.