I-T employee and two businessmen are being detained in a money laundering case for Rs. 264 crore
Tanaji Mandal Adhikari, an income tax inspector, and his business partners Bhushan Patil and Rajesh Shetty were detained by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with a money laundering investigation involving illegal tax deducted at source (TDS) refunds totaling Rs 264 crore. On Friday, a special court ordered that they remain under ED’s care until July 24.
Kriti Verma, a former GST inspector turned actor, was questioned by the ED in the matter in February. Tanaji Mandal Adhikari, an I-T inspector, and Patil “organised the fraud,” according to the report.
Adhikari would clear the fake TDS refund claim in Patil’s firm account using the login credentials and passwords of his senior officers in the I-T department. Adhikari cleared 12 bogus TDS returns of Rs 264 crore in a year, from November 2019 to November 2020. ED claimed that all of the profits of crime were transferred to Patil’s company’s bank account and then redirected to other accounts.
Adhikari created a refund worth more than Rs 264 crore unlawfully and credited it to the account of SB Enterprises, a Patil-owned business. By utilising the access code belonging to his senior officer, Adhikari fraudulently and illegally added the name of SB Enterprises to the IT system, and all refunds were attributed to it. Following that, a number of immovable assets were bought in Patil’s name. Adhikari had access to the debit and credit cards of Patil’s personal bank accounts, where some of the money had also been redirected, and he could withdraw or transfer funds anytime he needed to do so. Additionally, Adhikari transferred Rs 55.5 billion from those accounts to fictitious businesses. Additionally, he transferred Rs 34 crore from Patil’s account to the bank accounts of Shetty, his wife, and their company. According to the allegations made by the ED, “Patil and Shetty played crucial roles in layering and placement of proceeds of crime.”
The ED announced in a press statement in January that it had seized 32 properties in Maharashtra and Karnataka worth Rs 70 crore as part of the investigation. According to the press release, the attached properties include lands in Lonavla, Khandala, Karjat, Pune, and Udupi, as well as homes in Panvel and Mumbai and three high-end vehicles. Bhushan Patil, Rajesh Shetty, Sarika Shetty, Kriti Verma, and others are the names on these properties.
