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Money laundering suspected in KPC dealings

By Biplab Kr Dey

TURA, Sept 6 - The story of KPC group, a company headed by one Kali Pradip Chaudhari, who received the contract to set up the Shillong Medical College, has again come up for further scrutiny after the discovery of a case of tax evasion that came to light in West Bengal.

The company has been slapped with charges of tax evasion to the amount of more than Rs 33 crores over a period of three years from 2007-2010.

The KPC group had manipulated the system to get tax sops by taking loans from companies that existed only on paper and then turned them into donations to the Institute. All this, while the company showed a negative balance.

The whole matter came to light after an income tax raid in the house of the company CEO, Bhaskar Ghosh on July 12, 2010, which led to recovery of more than Rs 35 lakh. Upon being questioned, Ghosh admitted that the money belonged to the KPC group and was given to him for safe custody.

The order in the case was given on June 24, 2015 and was heard under the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, Kolkata. The accounts of the company came in for scrutiny and the IT department found that the company had been showing losses for the assessment years 2007-2010. Mysteriously, however, the group was being financed by five companies of dubious origins, the worth of which was only about a lakh of rupees but had given loans amounting to a total of over Rs 33 crore. These loans were later converted into donations received by the KPC group to evade taxes.

�During the course of survey and in post survey enquiry, it came to the notice of the Revenue department that five companies had given a loan totaling to Rs 33.21 crores to Kali Pradip Chaudhari Foundation Trust, who on the same day had given that loan to the assessee. Later on, these loans were converted into donations and according to the assessee it was a corpus donation.

The modus operandi of the assessee, according to the IT department was that multiple bank entries were undertaken and ultimately the money reached to the assessee by way of donation. �After hearing the assessee (KPC group), the AO imposed the penalty amounting to Rs 98,57,100/-, Rs 58,11,950/- and Rs 4,49,00,790/- in assessment years 2007-08 to 2009-10 respectively�, added the report.

On the question of the five donor companies, the Court said, �A perusal of the balance sheet annexed with winding up of petitions in all five companies would indicate that these companies had never conducted any business.

For example Sunview Properties Pvt Ltd was incorporated in 2007. It has total value of assets of Rs 95,747. This company gave a huge donation of Rs 50 lakh in 2007-08, Rs 3.35 crore in 2008-09 and Rs 2.15 crore in 2009-10. Similar is the position with regard to other companies. On reality check, all these companies are apparently bogus�.

�How can a company with assets of Rs 1 lakh provide donations worth crores of rupees? Where did the money come from? This is a very serious issue and needs to be taken seriously by Meghalaya Government�, said president of CSWO, Agnes Kharshiing, �We have been time and again pointing to the fact that something within KPC was amiss and this proves that we are right.

�How something as big as a medical college can be entrusted to a company that has a dubious reputation is something that we fail to understand. It is reported that the main owner of this Company has over 10 cases pending in a Court in the USA. So, how come there has been no action taken from our Govt to check on this. We demand a serious investigation into the credentials of this company�, added Kharshiing.

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