The Income Tax department on Tuesday has begun raids on Phoenix Group, one of the prominent infrastructure companies in Telangana, on the suspicion that the company had resorted to largescale evasion of tax.
The IT sleuths are conducting simultaneous raids in 20 different locations including its Corporate office located on Road No 45 in Banjara Hills, Nanakramguda, and Madhapur, since morning.
Phoenix, promoted by Chukkapalli Suresh, is a corporate conglomerate, which has business interests in real estate, automobiles, power, and mining.
The IT raids are following the tip-off that the group had indulged in alleged tax evasion and investments and other financial irregularities.
The authorities have also been conducting searches in the residences of Suresh Chukkapalli, his sons Avinash and Aakash, besides that of other directors including Mangalam Padmapriya Sridharan, Srikanth Badiga, Satya Srinivas Dammavalam Rao and Gopi Krishna.
Several politicians, bureaucrats, and celebrities are said to partners in Phoenix group.
The raids were conducted three days after Suresh Chukkapalli celebrated his 60 birthday in a prominent hotel in the city where several high-profile people, officials and celebrities attended the event.
There have been reports that after the differences with My Home group promoted by Jupalli Rameshwar Rao, the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi has been pampering Phoenix group led by Chukkapalli Suresh.
The group is learnt to have been allotted major chunks of land in Madhapur and surroundings, in which the family members of chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao allegedly have huge shares.
So, the present IT raids are believed be part of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Central government’s strategy to target the TRS and KCR family to hit at their financial roots. Let us see how far it will go.