Merely days after the IT raids at the residential premises of The Quint owner Raghav Bahl, more evidence and allegations have surfaced against him, as reported by PGurus. As per the report, Raj Kumar Modi, managing director of PMC Fincorp, a shell company Bahl had invested money in, has claimed that Bahl had converted unaccounted black money/cash to cheque—without paying any taxes—by booking Long Term Capital Gain (LTCG) of more than ₹100 crore in PMC Fincorp.
It is reported that Raghav Bahl and his wife invested ₹3.03 crore in the penny stock company PMC Fincorp LTD promoted by Raj Kumar Modi. In spite of the company not indulging in any trade activity, the price of the shares shot up to ₹848/share in the next two years from the initial price of ₹5.50/share when Bahl had bought them. Bahl had then sold his shares following which the price of the shares appears to have crashed again.
More damaging for Bahl, Raj Modi has reportedly made a statement to IT officials where he claimed that Bahl’s chartered accountant had given him ₹100 crores in cash “to convert into white”. “I remember Ritu Kapur and Raghav Bahl got ₹100 crore converted,’’ Modi stated as per the Newslaundry report.
“The financials of the company have no correlation with the movement in share prices. With respect to the sharp rise in prices, I would like to state that prices of the shares have been rigged for purpose of bogus long-term capital gain. My net earnings were 1.5 per cent of the amount converted to white money from black.’’
This ₹100 crore amount was used by seven Kolkata based companies to buy the stocks of PMC Fincorp from Bahl at a highly inflated price, and thus the money came back to him as white money. These 7 companies are shell companies owned by Modi used for such bogus transactions.
The IT officials, it appears, have a genuine cause for their raids against Raghav Bahl. We have reported earlier that the entire media had come in support of Bahl and blamed political vendetta for the raids instead of waiting for more details to emerge. Now that more details are indeed emerging, it seems the media may well end up with egg on their faces.
