The Income Tax department conducted search and survey on December 4 in the case of leading coal traders of Assam at 21 locations in Guwahati, Digboi, Margherita and Delhi.
According to the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), the group of coal traders are accused of having allegedly routed accomodation entries of over Rs 23 crores and Rs 62 crores in the form of non-genuine share capital and non-genuine unsecured loans respectively, through certain Kolkata-based shell compes.
All this was done by suppression of its true net profit.
"During the course of the search action, it has been established that the group engages in out-of-books transactions. Handwritten documents/diaries regarding cash transactions have been recovered which are not reflected in the regular books of accounts. Such transactions detected so far across all the locations combined is upwards of Rs 150 crores, of which payments made of a total of more than Rs 100 crores have been found to be violative of various sections of the Income Tax Act, 1961. Such seized documents are voluminous and are being investigated further," CBDT further said.
Loan transactions made in cash were also found to be more than Rs 10 crores. Stock difference of more than Rs 7 crores was found and no cogent explanation regarding the same was provided, it added.
CBDT further said: "In the office of the Kolkata-based shell company acquired by one of the entities of the group, no books of accounts and Registrar of Compes (ROC) mandated documents were found, proving the same to be a bogus entity used only to route unaccounted income of the group."
Unexplained cash of approximately Rs 3.53 crore has also been found during the search, which has been seized by the department. Cash investments in share capital during demonetisation period were also detected, it added.
Further investigation is underway.
( With inputs from ANI )
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