MUMBAI: The Income Tax investigation wing claims to have unearthed a racket involving middlemen operating from permanently booked suites in a five star hotel and providing end-to-end services on behalf of state ministers to corporates and entrepreneurs. The services ranged from land allotment to obtaining government clearances, I-T said in a press release. The intermediaries were also being paid by bureaucrats in Maharashtra to secure lucrative postings and government contractors to get payments cleared, the release added.
I-T carried out a three-day search starting September 23 at the suites along with 25 residential and 15 office premises. Transactions detected were worth Rs 1,050 crore, I-T said. Mobile phones, pen drives, hard drives and emails of suspects were seized during the operation.
I-T has also seized Rs 4.6 crore cash, jewellery of Rs 3.4 crore and restrained use of four bank lockers. The four middlemen under probe used ‘angadiyas’ or couriers for transfer of cash, it said. I-T seized Rs 150 lakh from one of them The release said, “The syndicate, consisting of businessmen/middlemen/persons holding public offices, used code names in their records and in one case had back-dated records by 10 years.”
It said the money seized included “cash paid by bureaucrats for getting key postings”.Officers also recovered documents including a summary of cash generated and disbursed with particulars of the amounts received and receivables.