I-T dept. seizes ₹1 cr. from city-based firm

₹400 cr. in unaccounted income detected

The Income Tax department has seized ₹1 crore and detected unaccounted income of over ₹400 crore during searches conducted on a prominent business group based out of Chennai.

The group deals in non-ferrous metal processing — lead, copper and aluminium — apart from money-lending activities, and is said to have reported a turnover of more than ₹1,000 crore.

The I-T department did not disclose the name of the group.

The searches were conducted on February 25, according to a statement by Surabhi Ahluwalia, spokesperson of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) and I-T Commissioner (Media and Technical Policy).

‘Kacha’ accounts

The highlight of the search operation was the discovery of hidden cloud servers that were different from those regularly used by the group for accounting, containing unaccounted transaction details often referred to by the group as ‘kacha’ accounts, the statement said.

“Similarly, a large amount of encrypted data was retrieved from a pen drive which was tracked and obtained from a third-party premise. The pen drive and the database were decrypted to gather information about the unaccounted capital accumulated by the group,” the press statement said.

Evidence was also gathered regarding the introduction of unaccounted funds as bogus share premium in one of the companies belonging to the group, it added. A large number of property documents, promissory notes and post-dated cheques taken as collateral security in the money-lending business were recovered and seized during the searches, the department said.

The investigations are ongoing and the department is in the process of finalising the proceedings.