The Income Tax department officials on Thursday raided properties owned by Congress MLA BA Mohiuddin Bava’s younger brother, BM Farooq, media reports said.
The raids were conducted at the offices of five companies either owned or connected to BA Farooq. Reports suggested that the raids would go on for two more days.
The Income Tax officials are probing entries made in Farooq’s books which suggest that he had taken various unsecured loans from individuals and business entities for high energy business.
Farooq had contested in the June 2016 Rajya Sabha elections with a JD(S) ticket. At the time, he had declared assets worth Rs 750 crore.
According to the affidavit submitted by Farooq during the election, a company named Greenco Energies Pvt Ltd had granted Farooq an unsecured loan of Rs 4 crore. Greenco is also under the I-T radar, reports said.
As per the entries in Farooq’s affidavit, the total amount of unsecured loans obtained by him amounts to Rs 51 crore.
I-T sleuths suspect that Farooq had obtained bribes which were misappropriated in his books, media reports said.
The I-T department had, on February 9, raided the home of Congress MLA from Hoskote, MTB Nagaraj and had recovered Rs 1.1 crore unaccounted cash. The raid had also revealed that the MLA had concealed the income of his family members amounting to Rs 120 crore.
Another I-T raid was carried out in four homes located in Belagavi and Gokak, belonging to Small Scale Energy Minister Ramesh Jarkiholi.
The I-T officals had also raided the home of Jarkiholi’s associate Lakshmi Hebbalkar on the same day. Hebbalkar is the President of the Congress’ Women’s Wing.
During the raids at Jarkiholi’s home, I-T officials found Rs 162 crore unaccounted income and 122.8 kg gold.
Ever since the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, the Income Tax Department had detected undisclosed income by tax defaulters to the tune of Rs 1,414.26 crore, which is said to be the highest detection of undisclosed income in the country.
Until December 28 last year, the I-T sleuths had conducted 44 search operations against hoarders of black money, which is the second highest in the country after Chennai.