Income Tax department deputes special team to transcribe Radia tapes

NEW DELHI: The Income Tax department has deployed a special team to transcribe the remaining recordings of the telephone conversations of corporate lobbyist Niira Radia after the Supreme Court had recently directed it to do so.

The department, according to sources, had earlier gone into the details of only those portions of recordings which it suspected related to alleged tax evasion.

Sources said the entire conversation would be transcribed by the team within the apex court stipulated time of two months.

The Supreme Court had last week directed the Income Tax (I-T) department, which had intercepted 5,800 telephone conversations of Radia, to get them transcribed within 2 months for a proper probe as some of them concern national security.

The department had earlier decided to hand over the remaining portion of the recordings to CBI which was carrying out its probe in the 2G spectrum allocation case on the basis of the transcribed recordings the I-T had given to them.

A Bench of justices G S Singhvi and S J Mukhopadhaya had expressed unhappiness over the fact that the probe into the incident was moving on the basis of the "analysis" of the transcript provided by the income tax department to CBI.

The bench had said "since certain intercepted conversations concern national security and there are some about the fiscal transactions which are dubious, so much needs to be done."

"It is a much more serious matter," the bench had emphasised and said "it will be appropriate that all recordings are transcribed".

The conversations were recorded as part of surveillance of Radia's phone on a complaint to the Finance Minister on November 16, 2007 alleging that within a span of nine years she had built up a business empire worth Rs 300 crore.