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CHENNAI: Income tax searches in the last four days in a metal processing and money lending group have led to seizure of Rs 1 crore cash and documentary evidence of Rs 400 crore unaccounted income. The searches done in Chennai have unearthed cloud servers used by the group for keeping clandestine accounts. That apart, the group maintained a normal accounting system too, said income tax officials.

“On Tuesday, the I-T department conducted searches on a prominent business group based in Chennai, dealing in the business of non-ferrous metal processing in lead, copper and aluminium and money lending activities. The group is said to have reported a turnover of more than thousand crores and is engaged in a number of businesses such as plastic manufacture and financing activities,” said CBDT spokesperson Surabhi Ahluwalia.

The department also found a large amount of encrypted data which was retrieved from a pen drive. “Our officials tracked and obtained the pen drive from a third party's premises. The highlight of the search is the discovery of hidden cloud servers other than the servers regularly used by the group for accounting, containing unaccounted transaction details often referred by the group as “kaccha” accounts,” said the official. The searches were held mostly in North Chennai .

The pen drive and the database were decrypted to gather information about the unaccounted capital accumulated by the group. Evidences were also gathered by the sleuths showing introduction of unaccounted funds as bogus share premium in one of the group companies.

“Large number of property documents, promissory notes, post-dated cheques taken as collateral security etc in the money lending business were recovered during the search. They have been seized,” she said.

The investigation is still going on and the department is in the process of consolidating the seizures, she said.

This is the second such metal processing group which has come under income tax scanner in the last one year. In July last year, searches in a steel industry syndicate in Chennai led to detection of Rs 300 crore unaccounted income.

