I-T dept raids importers in NCR, Haryana and West Bengal, claims Rs 2K crore worth goods shown as Rs 20 crore

New Delhi, Oct 16 (FN Agency) Income Tax (I-T) department’s searches in National Capital Region (NCR), Haryana and West Bengal have revealed large scale under-invoicing of imports. Goods imported through shell companies shown as valuing Rs 20 crore could actually be worth over Rs 2,000 crore, the I-T department said on Saturday. “Though the value of imports declared at the port of entry by the use of such shell entities in the past 3 years is about Rs 20 crore, it is estimated that the actual value during this period could be more than Rs 2,000 crore given the scale of massive under-valuation detected,” an official statement said. The cash generated from dubious deals were used for acquisition of high value immovable properties.

The shell firms disguised cash in the form of bogus rental income and bogus unsecured loans besides deposits in foreign bank accounts. “During the course of the search, unaccounted cash of Rs 2.75 crore has been seized. Further investigations are in progress,” the I-T department said. The evidences found and seized during the crackdown revealed that the payments for under-invoiced goods to the foreign consigners were made through hawala channels. “Almost the entire business has been found to be run through such modus-operandi,” the department said. The modus operandi involved import of goods in the name of shell entities at under-valued or making wrongful declaration to evade customs duty. Upon clearance at ports, such goods were distributed across the country by way of out-of-books cash transactions. “This aspect has been fortified while searching one of the containers at Kolkata Port, where the bill of lading declared the goods as ‘HDMI cables’ valued at Rs 3.8 lakh. However, on de-sealing and searching the same, it has been revealed that the actual goods imported are high value items like laptops, mobile phones etc which are valued at Rs 64 crore,” the official statement said.