IT Recovers Rs 106 Crore Cash, 127 kgs Of Gold Bars During Raids In Chennai

Chennai: The Income Tax department raided the premises of businessman Sekhar Reddy and his brother/associate Srinivasa Reddy here on Thursday and seized Rs 90 crore cash and 100 kg gold, said officials.

According to officials, the raids began in the morning in eight premises here and in other places in the state. Out of the total cash, around Rs 70 crore was in the newly issued Rs 2,000 notes, while remaining Rs 20 crore in old currency notes.

It may be noted that Sekhar Reddy is a Board member of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD). He was appointed to the Board after N Chandrababu Naidu became chief minister of Andhra Pradesh. Sekhar Reddy runs sand mining business and is said to have lucrative contracts from the Tamil Nadu government. Also, Reddy is one of the few people who had direct access to Poes Gardens, the residence of late chief minister J Jayalalithaa.

Officials said the department has called in for additional staff, auditors, counting machines and banking personnel to ascertain the final figures of the recovered assets and formalise the seizure process under tax laws. They said a number of documents related to financial transactions, entries of gold sale and records of sale/purchase are being scrutinised by the tax sleuths.

They added at least three people of the alleged syndicate are being questioned by the taxmen who are still in operations. The tax department had made the largest seizure of Rs 5.7 crore cash in new notes in Bengaluru few days back after which two other central probe agencies, the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate, had taken over the cases to probe instances of corruption, money laundering and large-scale hawala transactions in the wake of the currency scrap on November 8.