The Income Tax Department today said that it has detected 36 benami properties worth Rs 130 crore in a raid on the premises of Shiv Sena Corporator Yashwant Jadhav and some Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) contractors. The raid was carried out on February 25 and around 35 premises were scanned across Mumbai.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) today said preliminary investigations indicate that these contractors have evaded income to the extent of Rs 200 crore through malpractices. The CBDT claimed to have found evidence of a close nexus between these contractors and Jadhav.
Jadhav is chairman of the standing committee which sanctions expenditure proposals and approves budgets. “Numerous incriminating documents, loose sheets and digital evidence have been found and seized. The evidence so seized strongly indicate a close nexus between these contractors and the said (prominent) person,” the statement alleged.
The tax department said that detected assets include properties acquired either in Jadhav’s name or their associates or benamidars (in whose name the benami asset is standing). “Evidence of their (prominent person) involvement in international hawala transaction and routing of the ill-gotten money to certain foreign jurisdictions have also been recovered,” said the statement.
The CBDT said that it found loose sheets and excel files with details of unaccounted cash receipts and payments aggregating to several crores. The department claimed that seized documents show large-scale suppression of taxable income by inflating the expenses. The CBDT said the probe in the case is continuing and Rs 2 crore cash and jewellery worth Rs 1.5 crore have been seized so far.
Shiv Sena leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut had alleged that the raids were conducted with an ulterior motive to malign the party ahead of the crucial Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections due later this year. The Shiv Sena, which is in power in Maharashtra along with the NCP and Congress, rules the BMC at present.