The income tax department, without naming Bollywood actor Sonu Sood, said on Saturday it had evaded more than 20 crore rupees in taxes. The department in a statement said Sood funneled “unrecorded income in the form of bogus unsecured loans” through bogus entities.
On September 15, the IT department raided 28 premises in Mumbai, Lucknow, Kanpur, Jaipur, Delhi and Gurgaon in connection with its case against Sood and a Lucknow-based real estate company. The department said it discovered that Sood concealed business loan receipts from the books of accounts to allegedly evade taxes. He also alleged that the 48-year-old actor used the loans to acquire properties.
According to the tax administration, the Sood Charitable Foundation – founded last July – has raised Rs 18.94 crore in donations from April 2021 to date and has spent only Rs 1.7 crore on relief work. . The remaining Rs 17 crore rests on the foundation, he alleged.
The department also alleged that the Sood Charitable Foundation collected Rs 2.1 crore outside India, in violation of the standards of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act.
“The simultaneous search operations carried out in various premises of an infrastructure group in Lucknow in which the said actor has concluded a real estate project in a joint venture and invested significant funds, have made it possible to uncover the prosecution evidence relating to tax evasion and irregularities in the account books, ”the statement said. The department reportedly found cases of circular transactions by the infrastructure group to the tune of Rs 175 crore.
As a result of the searches, the department seized money worth Rs 1.8 crore and placed nine lockers under restraining orders. The requests sent by The Indian Express to the Sood Charity Foundation did not elicit a response.
