On Thursday, in Bengaluru Income Tax department seized worth of Rs. 4.7 crores at the time of seizure of cash in the form of new currency after demonetisation.
As per the officials statements, these searches were conducted at the places of two engineers who are working with the state government and some other “connected persons”.
During the early morning, a team of around 50 I-T investigators and police employees launched the operation. They conducted searches at premises of Bengaluru, Erode and Chennai.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), the policy-making body of the tax department, mentioned in a statement that, ” During the course of searches Rs 4.7 crore cash in new denominations of Rs 2000 and 0.3 crore in old/smaller denominations totaling Rs 5 crore and 7 kg bullion worth approximately Rs 2 crore were found in a flat owned by a civil contractor”.
They also added that, “The new notes and bullion are learnt to have been obtained by exchange of demonetised notes by payment of commission of an engineer and a contractor”.
During this operation, the sleuths also recovered notes of Rs. 100 and banned notes of Rs.500. Also, some gold biscuits were recovered. The department had to arrange note counting machines and some extra staff to take out the value of the cash.
A senior official of I-T department said, ” This is the highest seizure of the new currency in the country post the currency ban on November 8. Some entry operators and bankers in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are under the scanner. Such volume of new currency cannot be obtained without connivance of bank officials”.
In the nationwide searched conducted in whole country, the agency has recovered, Rs. 1 crore in the form of new notes.
Constant searches by T-T department and ED have been conducted after encountering the reports of illegal exchange of new money notes with old currency notes.
