I-T RAIDS UNEARTH RS 200 CR, GOLD FROM CITY POTHOLES, GARBAGEbb
While Bangaloreans continue to live surrounded by garbage and risk life and limb every day navigating the hundreds of potholes, the civic administrators, it seems, is making hay while the proverbial sun shines.
But it looks like all that’s about to end. A two-day-long Income Tax (I-T) raid comprising over 450 sleuths raided around 100 houses and found unaccounted income of up to Rs 200 crore, 15 kg gold and Rs 4 crore in cash.
After finding the cache I-T investigators have now decided to dig deeper into the business activities of contractors who handle garbage collection and disposal, and road asphalting within BBMP limits.
Theraide began early in the morning of October 9 and continued into the 10th. Investigators from the Bangalore and Chennai units, worked under the guidance of seven Indian Revenue Services (IRS) officers. Director (Income Tax), Ravichandra supervising the operation. Around 100 houses mostly in Bangalore and few in Bijapur, Gulbarga, Udupi, Raichur, Pune, Mumbai, Gurgaon were raided.
“We have discovered a contractor-bureaucrat-politician nexus through these raids. In the coming days, those who have benefited from these contractors, mainly politicians and bureaucrats will be targeted,” a senior I-T department officer told Bangalore Mirror.
The investigators were astonished by the amount of unaccounted income that was discovered during the raid. ‘Before conducting this raid, which we planned based on a tip-off, we did our homework and drew up a list of contractors and then segregated them under BBMP Garbage Contracts Mafia, BBMP Road Contracts Asphalt Mafia, and Irrigation Contracts Mafia. Then we kept a watch on these people. A special raid team was drawn from IT units located in Chennai. This was done to maintain utmost secrecy regarding the raids. The result of this is the detection of huge amount of unaccounted money,” the officer added.
More than 100 investigators are now scrutinising documents found in the homes raided. Some property documents recovered from reveal a number of fronts connected to influential politicians and bureacrats involved in the civic administration of Bangalore.” the officer added.
Read full article: Bangalore Mirror