Bengal lottery scam: Dubious entity was under IT Dept scanner since 2012

Kolkata: The dubious lottery-entity, against whose activities in West Bengal the Enforcement Directorate (ED) sleuths took action last week, had been under the scanner of the Income Tax Department since 2012.

Sources said that the first time the tax evasion activities by the said lottery entity came under the scanner was in 2012 when one of the directors was arrested in Chennai.

Thereafter in 2015, the Income Tax officials conducted massive raid and search operations at different offices of the entity and confiscated over Rs 70 crore as a follow-up process.

Thereafter, sources added, the activities of the entity were a low-key affair for a couple of years only to revive in a very aggressive manner at the end of 2017.

However, sources added, at the point of time when the Income Tax Department was carrying out actions against the lottery-entity, the charges were just related to tax evasions.

However, with the ED taking up the matter now, the charges against the entity are multiple, which include money laundering, illegal parking of proceeds through hawala route to different nations and investing the illegal proceeds in various other businesses.

The main part of the money laundering aspect in this alleged lottery scam is that the lucky draws were on the unsold tickets, thus duping those who had purchased tickets with their hard-earned money.

Subsequently, fake winners were projected through advertisements through multiple mediums, luring more people.

Sources said people often got trapped by such advertisements and purchased those tickets unaware of the fact that lucky draws would not be drawn on the tickets purchased by them.

Last week, the ED officials conducted marathon raid and search operations at some locations in and around Kolkata, which included a lottery-printing press on the northern outskirts of Kolkata.

In this connection, the ED officials also confiscated unaccounted cash worth Rs 3 crore from the residence-cum-office of an agent of the said lottery entity at Lake Market in South Kolkata.

Leader of Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari has been for quite some time alleging a major lottery scam in West Bengal in which several poor people in rural India have lost their hard-earned money.

He has also alleged that important leaders of the ruling Trinamool Congress were the principal beneficiaries in the lottery scam.