Acting on specific inputs, the Income Tax (IT) department seized unaccounted cash worth Rs 32.6 crore and approximately 10 kilograms of gold in a search action covering 20 premises, including residences, factory and offices, of a company in a tier-3 city in Tamil Nadu.
The operation was started by the IT Department on November 15 against a company involved in the business of manufacturing certain specialized materials that are supplied to the health sector in India and abroad, according to a press release by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) on Sunday.
During the course of the search operation, the IT team found that "the company has systematically inflated its expenditure using bogus or fabricated invoices."
Further, by showing such "non-existent expenditures" in its books of account, the company and its promoters had kept on suppressing the actual income over many years, according to the release.
"It was found that the company would pay for such bogus expenses by cheque or RTGS and then receive the cashback. The unaccounted income so generated has been deployed by the company's promoters into investments in immovable properties by making unaccounted payments, further investments in the business itself as share capital and in fixed Bank deposits, cash, and other valuables," the release added.
The undisclosed income of the company and its promoters is estimated at about Rs 435 crores.
Further investigation is underway.