I-T refers tax fraud to Enforcement Directorate

Vijayawada: The case involving fraudulent transactions of Rs 2,000cr by three infra companies owned by Telugu Desam leaders is getting deeper with the income-tax department deciding to refer the case to other investigating agencies like Enforcement Directorate and Serious Fraud Investigation Office.

What makes this more interesting is that the benami prohibition wing of the IT department is handling the case from survey to searches lending credence to the allegations that the real beneficiaries of these fraudulent transactions were someone else.

Though the searches were conducted a few days ago, the IT department is said to have initiated the survey operations four months ago and did a lot of spade work before conducting the raids. The local offices of the IT department had no clue about the raids. Even CRPF personnel were brought from New Delhi by the benami prohibition wing to maintain utmost secrecy.

Official sources told Deccan Chronicle that the department had authentic information that P. Srinivas, former personal secretary to Telugu Desam supremo N. Chandrababu Naidu, was in the know of these transactions. There were simultaneous raids on companies of the Kadapa TD president, the son of an influential former minister from Guntur district in Naidu’s cabinet and a trusted follower of the first family in the party.

Sources said the I-T sleuths found that several companies shown as sub-contractors were not traceable and concluded that they were benamis of the original infra companies. The technology came of big help as the I-T officials searched for the IP addresses from where the annual income tax returns were filed and found that the returns of the companies in doubt were also filed from the same IP address.

The benami probhibition wing will write to the Enforcement Directorate to investigate the cases for possible FEMA violations.