Chennai: After five days of grilling former AIADMK minister Natham Viswanathan by income tax officials following raids on his premises, Enforcement Directorate has started showing interest in the transaction details unearthed by the I-T department, sources said here.
“From the kind of documents we have unearthed it is certain that there was a large number of benami transactions, hawala funding and foreign exchange diversion rather than income tax evasion. So after we finish our scrutiny, ED sleuths will be interested in Natham Viswanathan’s case,” a senior income tax officer told this newspaper.
ED officials may seek details from the former minister soon, an official said.
Income tax department’s interest in Natham’s transactions started in April when they seized Rs 5 crore from Anbunathan, a businessman in Karur during a pre-election raid. “Last week’s raids were an offshoot of April’s seizure. The money belonged to Natham’s family. Since then we were keeping an eye on Natham, his son and some other close relatives,” the I-T official said.
“Of course, Natham’s family was aware that we are keeping a watch on them. So we could not seize much money during the raids. But the volume of transaction details is really huge. We are digging deep into the files, tenders details, power purchase deals at EB when he was the power minister.
We believe certain bureaucrats too had helped him to amass wealth,” the official noted. Natham, who lost in the recent Assembly poll, was also removed from post of AIADMK organising secretary after I-T teams started raiding his premises on Monday.
