“I have not seen Rs 350 crore in my life…if you ask me, how many zeros are there, I will have to count,” former Union minister P Chidambaram said on Monday as he asserted that the Congress has nothing to do with the Rs 351 crore cash seizure during IT department raids against a distillery company owned by a party MP’s family.
The searches that began against the Bhubaneswar-headquartered Boudh Distillery Pvt. Ltd. (BDPL) are continuing at about seven locations on Monday, the sixth day after they were launched by the taxman on December 6 on charges of alleged tax evasion and “out of book” transactions.
The IT department has effected the country’s highest-every cash seizure of Rs 351 crore by any agency in a single operation after the five-day counting ended on Sunday.
The premises of Congress Rajya Sabha MP from Jharkhand Dhiraj Prasad Sahu in Ranchi and other places were also covered during the searches by the department.
Asked about the cash seizure, Chidambaram said, “I have not seen Rs 350 crores in my life.
If you ask me, how many zeros are there, I will have to count. The Congress party has clearly said that the party is nothing to do with the cash that was seized and only Mr. Sahu, the gentleman allegedly concerned has to explain the position.”
“The Congress party has nothing to do with the seizure of cash allegedly belonging to an individual or his business. We only run a party, where there is a party and there are members in the party for political purposes. We are not concerned about the business of an individual. He will explain when he chooses to explain,” he said.
The cash seizure in searches against the Odisha-based company has been calculated at Rs 351 crore after five days of counting and is the “highest-ever” haul in a single action by any probe agency in the country, official sources had said on Sunday.
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