Rs 4-cr assets of 2 realty firms seized

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 27

The Central Bureau of Direct Taxes (CBDT) today said I-T sleuths have seized jewellery and cash worth Rs 4 crore after raids on two Ludhiana real estate developers about two weeks ago.

It said the raids were conducted on 40 premises of unidentified groups on November 16.

In an official statement, the CBDT said the major finding after the operation against the groups was about the receipt of unaccounted cash on property transactions. “Documentary evidence in the nature of ‘agreement to sale’ (known as biyana in local parlance) for certain properties have been seized,” it added.

“These documents indicate that the ‘agreement to sale’ for plots has been executed at much higher amount or rate as compared to the consideration disclosed in the registered sale deed of the plot,” the CBDT said.

It claimed “incriminating” documents in the form of loose sheets, excel sheets showing calculation of receipt of funds for certain property transactions, soft data, chats from mobile phones of the persons concerned, etc. were recovered.

Probe showed that unaccounted cash expenditure had been incurred on the construction of a residential house of one of the key persons. In one of the groups, defaults on compliance for the provisions of tax deducted at source had been detected with regard to payments made to the sellers of the land, it added.

The searches have resulted in seizure of unaccounted cash of about Rs 2 crore, besides foreign exchange and unexplained jewellery of about Rs 2.30 crore, it said.