The Income Tax Department has unearthed a black money trail of over Rs 1,000 crore in a search and seizure operations on two leading business groups running popular chains of retail stores that sell jewellery, textiles and home appliances in Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai and Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu, according to information provided by the finance ministry. 

The searches on the two groups have also led to a seizure of cash to the tune of Rs. 10 crore and jewellery as well as bullion worth about Rs 6 crore, the official statement disclosed.

The raids carried out on Dec 1 covered over 37 premises of the two groups. 

In the case of the first group, documents and other incriminating materials gathered during the course of the search revealed that the assessee had been actively involved in systematically suppressing sales by manipulating their books of accounts. The extent of suppression of sales has been found to be more than Rs 1000 crore, over a period of several years. It was also found, that, the assessee had made unaccounted cash purchases of about Rs 150 crore in textile division and jewellery division, during the past few years.

In respect of the second group, incriminating material seized during the course of search, has revealed that the assessee group had obtained bogus bills from a set of parties to the tune of Rs. 80 crore and thereby suppressed taxable income.

Evidence relating to the unaccounted purchases of gold have also been gathered. Besides, the assessee group is found to be debiting inflated making charges of jewellery. In addition, unaccounted rental receipts and the scrap sales aggregating to Rs. 7 crore have also been detected.

Further investigations are still in progress.

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