Chandigarh, August 22
The Income Tax department’s investigations into the ambitious housing project of Tata, which bought huge chunks of land belonging to two Kansal- based societies, has led to an “unaccounted” trail of a whopping Rs 101 crore cash transactions between Hash Builders --- raids on whom were conducted yesterday --- and a Mumbai-based jewellery house.
According to sources in the I-T department, the transactions were done over a period of time and a major part of the amount as part of the deal for acquiring the land was paid to the members of the two societies --- Punjab MLAs housing society and Defence Services society.
While nearly 22 acres of land were bought from the Punjab legislators’ society, the other society also sold a huge plot to the Tata Housing Development Company (THDC).
Sources said there was a tripartite agreement between THDC, Hash Builders and the societies under which each member of the societies had to be paid a certain amount (Rs 82 lakhs in case of the MLAs’ society) besides a four- bedroom flat in the multi-storeyed housing complex to be constructed by the Tatas. The total payment for the MLAs’ society was close to Rs 106 crores, while the other society was to get
Rs 125 crore.
Sources further revealed there could be a possibility that the Mumbai-based jewellery house had planned to invest sum of Rs 101 crore, which has been traced to Hash Builders, in Tata’s project. The I-T department is now verifying the credentials of Hash Builders, a company, which was founded just three years ago. Information collected from the firm’s website, hashbuilders.com, revealed that it was founded in 2006, at the time when the talks between the Tatas and the MLAs’ society was going on. The deal was reportedly finalised in the first quarter of 2007. Payments to the tune of Rs 15 lakh were also made to the MLAs at that time.
While I-T officials are tight-lipped about the background of the promoters of Hash Builders, they claim that at least one of them had courted some controversy earlier relating to a “computer software” manufacturing company. “We are collecting information on them and will come out with the details soon”, said
an official.
IT Commissioner- II, AK Kaushal confirmed an unaccounted trail of a huge sum of money but refused to divulge more details saying that it could “hamper” the investigations.
