New Delhi: Imbued with a sense of purpose, buoyed by the recent whopper which came in through the Income Declaration Scheme, the Supreme Court appointed Special Investigative Team is looking at specific cases of diversion of black money overseas.
Though the black cash stash amnesty scheme last year was a failure since it didn't pay in spades, Among the many intriguing cases of evasion unearthed by the Department of Income Tax which has caught the eye of the SIT is a case probed by the Investigation Wing in Mumbai where the assessee is an individual belonging to one of the most reputed business families who is running many businesses. It was found that a close associate of the main assessee maintains his accounts in a gmail account.
The close associate was interrogated by the department about the account and it was found that the e-mails related to the undisclosed foreign accounts of the assessee were deleted.
The associate was persuaded to send an email to the foreign banker to resend the mails and the Department got a copy these emails. On careful analysis of these emails, it was found that the emails contain the complete details of the assessee‘s undisclosed foreign bank accounts and other investments. The total investment exceeded a staggering $48 billion. Now even if there is a typo in this government document accessed by Financial Chronicle with a decimal missing, it is still a very large sum of money, for it works out to $4.8 billion. Of course at $48 billion, it is truly bulge bracket and obscene.
Many ingenious cases of concealment of income have been unearthed by the taxmen in the recent past. In another case, a search was conducted by Bangalore Directorate in two listed real estate companies which revealed illegal stashes.
The department had evidences for collection of on-money by these listed companies. Cash generated through these mode was used to make unaccounted cash payments towards land purchases and project approvals.
The major challenge in this exercise was the huge data running more than 4 TB which was cloned and imaged.
