New Delhi, Sep 6 (UNI) Enforcement Directorate on Friday grilled the former Chairman of defunct airline Jet Airways in connection with the alleged violations under Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) for the second time , a source in the agency said here.
Mr Goel was summoned to depose before the probe agency on Wednesday but he was not able to join the questioning and he appeared before the agency on Friday.
He has been questioned by the ED officials in Delhi on August 24 in this case.
The central financial probe agency has conducted multiple raids on August 23 at 12 office and residential premises located at Mumbai and Delhi connected with the Jet Airways group and its erstwhile promoters Naresh Goyal and his long time associate Hasmukh Gardi. The search resulted in the seizure of various incriminating documents and digital evidences.
The ED raid comes following complaints and intelligence inputs received from various sources.
The business empire of Mr Goyal, included 19 privately held companies of which 14 companies are registered in India and five companies are registered outside India.
“He also indirectly controls various entities abroad some of which are in tax havens. Preliminary investigations done so far indicate that Mr Goyal had structured various tax evading schemes involving its domestic companies and the companies in foreign tax jurisdiction thereby siphoning off huge amount in foreign jurisdictions through dubious, fictitious transactions”, the probe agency said.
“Fictitious, inflated payments had been made to some of these foreign entities under various airline lease agreements, aircraft maintenance agreements and huge amounts appears to have been sent abroad by way of inflated commission to its own group entity in Dubai which acted as airline’s exclusive overseas General Sales Agent (GSA)”, officials said in the agency.
Investigations also indicate that Goyal would have been the beneficial owner of some bank accounts abroad having huge deposits which prima facie appeared that these transactions might had involved various violations under FEMA, they added.
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