Published 23:22 IST, August 11th 2020
Income Tax Department raids multiple premises of Chinese entities & their confederates
In a big development on Tuesday, the Income Tax department raided various premises of Chinese entities, their close confederates, and a couple of bank employees
In a big development on Tuesday, the Income Tax department raided various premises of Chinese entities, their close confederates, and a couple of bank employees. This action was taken on credible information that a few Chinese nationals and their Indian associates are involved in money laundering and hawala transactions through a series of shell entities. According to a Central Board of Direct Taxes spokesperson, the raids revealed that over 40 bank accounts were created in various dummy entities at the behest of Chinese individuals.
They entered into credits of Rs.1,000 crore over a period of time. Moreover, the CBDT alleged that a subsidiary of a Chinese company and its related concerns have taken over Rs.100 crore bogus advance from shell entities for opening businesses of retail showrooms in India. During the searches, the active involvement of bank employees and chartered accountants in hawala transactions and money laundering was reportedly ascertained as a result of incriminating documents. Adding that evidence of foreign hawala transactions involving Hong Kong and US dollars had been unearthed, the CBDT elaborated that further investigation is under progress.
Crackdown on China
20 Army personnel martyred in the violent clash with China at the Line of Actual Control on June 15 led to national outrage. There have been growing calls for drastically altering the relationship with China in the wake of this dastardly incident. On May 29, the Ministry of Information Technology invoked its power under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act read with the relevant provisions of the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking of Access of Information by Public) Rules 2009 to ban TikTok and 58 other Chinese Apps.
This includes Shareit, Kwai, UC Browser, Baidu map, Shein, Clash of Kings, DU battery saver, Helo, Likee, YouCam makeup, Mi Community, CM Browers, We Chat, UC Browser, Virus Cleaner, DU Cleaner, etc. According to the Union government, this was a targeted move to ensure the safety and sovereignty of Indian cyberspace. Recently, the IT Ministry banned 47 Apps which were variants or clones of these aforesaid Apps banned earlier. Additionally, the Centre has taken a number of steps to limit the economic influence of China.
Updated 23:22 IST, August 11th 2020