Attempt made to colour my tax returns as bogus, says media baron Raghav Bahl

Raghav Bahl | @Raghav_Bahl/Twitter

Raghav Bahl says I-T officials seemed disappointed at being told that every piece of information, including details of his London flat, has been duly declared.

New Delhi: Media baron Raghav Bahl, whose house and office were raided by income tax officials Thursday, has said he has appropriately declared his assets and income and that there has been an attempt to “colour” his tax returns as “bogus”.

Bahl, who issued a statement Friday giving details of his financial and other assets, said he will take the legal route to resolve the issue.

“We shall mount a robust legal defence against every trumped-up charge that is brought against us,” his statement read.

Bahl is the founder of news portal The Quint and the Network18 group and a veteran journalist.

‘Fully declared’

Earlier, I-T officials said the searches were conducted to gather documents and other evidence for a case relating to, what they call, “bogus” income of Rs 118 crore and long-term capital gains received by several beneficiaries.

“All these and other gains/losses were fully detailed/declared in the appropriate year of tax filings, and more importantly, were accepted and assessed to tax, under this very government,” Bahl said in the statement.

“So the attempt to ‘colour’ our tax returns, now, as ‘bogus’, is clearly a frame-up, and we shall take every legal recourse to protect our fair name and reputation in this case,” he added.

According to Bahl, Rs 3.56 lakh in cash was recovered, along with jewellery worth around Rs 33 lakh, which was “almost entirely” from his 82-year-old mother’s cupboard.

Bahl claimed that all assets have been duly assessed and declared in past returns.

He also said that tax officials almost seemed disappointed at being told that every piece of information, including details of his flat in London, has been duly declared.

Bahl said he invested most of his legally permitted Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) — which currently allows each Indian to spend $250,000 in a year — in buying an asset in London for his children.

“Accordingly, we made a booking in a new apartment building a few years back, and pooled our annual LRS remittances for this purpose. All of this has been fully declared,” he said, adding that the tax officials repeatedly quizzed him to provide details of the apartment.

“When we answered, half-a-dozen times, in the positive, we could see that they were disappointed,” his statement read.

He also said that the taxmen were provided with the copy of share sale agreement of Network 18 to Reliance Industries Limited in 2014.

On the BloombergQuint joint venture deal, Bahl claimed the taxmen asserted that it was a case of round tripping. However, according to the statement, he produced a copy of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board’s approval for this investment by Bloomberg in Quintillion Business Media (P) Ltd.