The Income Tax Department has unearthed unaccounted income of more than Rs 1,300 crore in tax raids on certain individuals who had executed joint development agreements with various real-estate developers in Karnataka, according to information provided by the Finance Ministry issued today.

Undisclosed assets including hard cash and gold jewellery worth more than Rs. 24 crore have also been seized, the official statement said.

More than 50 premises spread across Bengaluru, Mumbai and Goa were covered in search and seizure operations carried out between Oct 10 and Nov 2.

During the course of the search operations, a large amount of incriminating evidence, in the form of documents and digital data has also been seized. Evidence regarding the sale agreements, development agreements and occupancy certificates have also been seized. The evidence revealed that the land owners had not disclosed income accrued to them from capital gains on transfer of the land given for development through joint agreements with various developers, even after issue of the occupancy certificates from the authorities.

It was also unearthed that in many instances, the land owners suppressed income from capital gains for various years by artificially inflating the costs and not disclosing full value of consideration on transfer of land. It was also found that some of the land owners didn’t even file their ITRs for several years, where capital gains income had accrued to them. When confronted , the assessees concerned  admitted  their lapses and agreed to disclose income from capital gains detected in their respective cases, and pay up the tax due from them.

Further investigations are in progress and the value of the unaccounted wealth could go up.