Hyderabad: A 20-member team of Income Tax officials raided the corporate office of Navayuga Engineering Company, located at Jubilee Hills, road number 10 looking for signs of large scale tax evasion. The tax men arrived at the office at around 8 am on Wednesday and reportedly took away documents and a hard disk. The searches are likely to continue.
Navayuga Engineering, the flagship company of the Navayuga group, has bagged multi-crore infrastructure projects in AP, such as the Polavaram Dam, Sundilla Barrage, Dhola-Sadia bridge (constructed over the Brahmaputra river), and other projects in irrigation and power. It also established a sea port in AP.
The Income Tax officials raided Eswara Rao, director of the AP Housing Corporation at Nadikudithipalem in Ranasthalam mandal in Srikakulam district.
The Navayuga group has over 100 firms, with its headquarters in Visakhapatnam and corporate office in Hyderabad. The group was earlier in the news when the registrar of companies (ROC) carried out a site inspection at Banjara Hills and Jubilee Hills and found 47 companies belonging to the Navayuga group had the same address. These shell companies were struck off by the ROC and reported to the ministry of corporate affairs.
It may be recalled that the Navayuga group chairman C. Visweswara Rao was questioned by the CBI in the Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy disproportionate assets case in May 2012.
This is the second time IT raids have been conducted against the group. In 2012, I-T officials carried out similar searches at the city offices of the Navayuga group along with the residences of the company top brass.
