Blackmoney case: Court summons Moin Qureshi, staff as accused

NEW DELHI: Controversial businessman Moin Ahmed Qureshi was today summoned as accused by a Delhi court in a black money case filed by the Income Tax Department for allegedly not disclosing his income of nearly Rs 20 crore.

A meat exporter, Qureshi and his employee Aditya Sharma were directed to appear in the court on March 2 by Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Devendra Kumar Sharma, who took cognisance of the complaint filed against them by the Income Tax (IT) department today.

The court took cognisance of the complaint against them under various provisions of the IT Act relating to making false statement and the IPC for the alleged offences of criminal conspiracy, giving or fabricating false evidence in a judicial proceeding. A conviction on these charges could fetch a maximum of three years in jail.

IT Department's Deputy Director Gaurav Pundir filed the complaint through its standing counsel, advocate Brijesh Garg, saying the department was conducting an investigation in the matter and had questioned Qureshi on February 15, 2014 at his residence here.

During questioning, Qureshi made a false statement when he was asked about his income and assets and those in the names of his family members or associates, the complaint said, adding, he was asked to furnish the list of lockers in banks.

It said that Qureshi told the officials that he has only one locker with HSBC Bank's South Extension branch but during investigation, the department found that he was having 11 lockers which were in the names of his employees and associates but the articles belonged to the businessman.

The lockers were operated by Qureshi's employees of A M Q Group on his instructions, it said.

The complaint said that over Rs 11.26 crore in cash and jewellery worth over Rs 8.35 crore were found in the lockers.

Later on, Qureshi also admitted that the money and the articles belonged to him and surrendered everything to the department saying it could deduct the income tax from the seized money and return rest of the articles to him.

The department took sanction to prosecute Qureshi and Sharma from IT department's Director M V Bhanumathi under the provisions of the IT Act and filed the complaint in the court.

It urged the court to summon Qureshi and Sharma for facing the trial in the matter.

Regarding Sharma, the IT department said that he tried to mislead the department by making false statement regarding the lockers.