Black money: DGCEI detects Rs 2,300 crore from a single firm

New Delhi: The Directorate General of Central Excise Intelligence (DGCEI) has detected and seized massive records of black money to the tune of Rs 2,300 crore at a secret office of a Kanpur-based iron and steel products maker.

Acting on intelligence, the DGCEI officials found that the private firm was allegedly evading excise duty in manufacturing of iron and other products.

The company was allegedly maintaining a secret office in Kanpur to keep a record of actual sales and evading payment of tax to the government by showing less sales, according to a press release issued today by the DGCEI.

"This (maintenance of secret office) was being done to avoid declaring actual purchase, manufacture and sale of iron and steel products to the various?tax departments of the Central and state governments to?escape the tax liabilities," it said.

The DGCEI officials visited the secret office of the firm, which has a number of companies and is a leading manufacturer of TMT bars (Saria), iron and steel flats, billets, wires, etc, and detected Rs 2,300 crore black money (which is the total amount of unaccounted sales proceeds), the release said.

The Managing Director of the firm was interrogated yesterday and put under arrest, it said.

Recently, DGCEI had detected eight illegal packing machines of pan masala and gutkha in Dabri village area of New Delhi and arrested two masterminds.

In this financial year so far, DGCEI has recovered over Rs 1,000 crore from tax evaders in its central excise and service tax investigations, the release said.