`2,000 crore worth of customs duty evasion unearthed

The Income Tax Department has unearthed massive customs duty evasion of over Rs2,000 crore in the past 3 years on import of laptops, mobile phones and peripheral parts through the Kolkata Port, describing the bill of lading as “HDMI cables”.

Its search operations began on October 10 across the national capital region, Haryana and West Bengal and the seizures include unaccounted Rs2.75 crore. Further probes are on.

The large-scale under-invoicing of imports was done by an importer of laptops and mobile phones. Seizures made in the course of search are several incriminating documents, diaries and digital evidences have been found which reveal that the group is entrenched into large scale under-invoicing and wrongful declaration of goods imported by it.

Large number of evidences indicating unrecorded transactions, unaccounted investment in properties, bogus loans taken, etc have also been gathered, the department said in a press note.

The evidences found and seized during the search reveal the payments for such underinvoiced goods to the foreign consigners have been made through hawala channels. Almost the entire business has been found to be run through such modus-operandi.

Though the value of imports declared at the port of entry by the use of such shell entities in the past 3 years is

A large number of evidences indicating unrecorded transactions, unaccounted investment in properties, bogus loans taken, etc have also been gathered, the department said in a press note.

about Rs20 crore, it is estimated the actual value during this period could be more than Rs2,000 crore, given the scale of massive under-valuation detected.

The modus operandi involves import of goods in the name of shell entities at under-valued and/or wrongful

declaration of description of goods imported, with an intent to evade customs duty. Upon clearance at port(s), such goods have been found to be distributed throughout India by way of out-of-books cash transactions.

The whole fraud was detected while searching one of the containers at Kolkata Port, where the bill of lading declared the goods as ‘HDMI cables’ valued at Rs3.8 lakh. However, on de-sealing and searching the same, it has been revealed the actual goods imported are high value items like laptops, mobile phones valued at Rs64 crore.