Man who declared Rs 14k crore now decides to seal his lips

AHMEDABAD: Businessman Mahesh Shah, who is in the dock for making a disclosure of Rs 13,860 crore under the Income Declaration Scheme allegedly for laundering black money of influential people for a commission, is proving to be a tough nut to crack.

Income tax officials said that he remained uncooperative during his six-hour interrogation on Monday . After surfacing before the media on Saturday , Shah had insisted that he would name all those whose untaxed wealth he intended to launder for a cut.

His interrogation was recorded by a team of I-T sleuths headed by Vinay Kaushal, deputy director (investigation). “Mahesh Shah was not cooperating with the investigation. He sought time for two or three days to provide the information and also said that his wife was not well.If he remains uncooperative, action will be taken against him,“ said director general (investigation) P C Mody . During the probe, a team of doctors was also called as Shah, a heart patient, complained of uneasiness.

Meanwhile, sources said that documents seized by the I-T department during searches at 15 locations revealed that Shah was on close terms with a Gujarat politician who shifted to Karnataka and a travel operator in Rajkot. “It is not yet clear whether this undisclosed income belonged to these people,“ a source said.

Shah, a big-ticket land dealer with business interests in Gujarat, Mumbai and Pune, had declared his income on September 30, the last date for disclosure under IDS. The first instalment of Rs 1,560 crore, 25% of the 45% tax imposed on his declared income, was to be paid on November 30.