According to the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), substantial material connected to tax evasion was discovered during a search of the actor’s Sonu Sood and his aides’ premises.
Actor Sonu Sood allegedly avoided taxes worth Rs 20 crore, according to the Income Tax Department. On September 15, the Income Tax officials searched 28 locations in Mumbai, Lucknow, Kanpur, Jaipur, Delhi, and Gurgaon in relation to the Bollywood star and a Lucknow-based real estate business.
Sood allegedly disguised professional receipts as loans in order to avoid paying taxes, according to the tax agency. The actor, 48, is also accused of using the money to buy houses, according to the department.
“The main modus operandi followed by the actor had been to route his unaccounted income in the form of bogus unsecured loans from many bogus entities,” a tax department official was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.
Sood’s charitable organisation received Rs 18.94 crore in donations from April 2021 to date, but only spent Rs 1.7 crore on humanitarian activities, according to I-T officials. According to the tax authorities, the remaining Rs 17 crore has sat unused.
Sood’s charitable foundation raised Rs 2.1 crore from outside India in breach of FCRA rules, according to the department.
The IT department is said to have discovered Rs 175 crore worth of circular trades by the infrastructure firm. The tax office has recovered Rs 1.8 crore in cash and placed nine lockers under a prohibitory order as a result of the searches.