S Alam Group has strongly protested the misleading report on tax evasion published in an English national daily on 18 September, 2024.
The group has responded to the report claiming that Ashraful Alam and Asadul Alam Mahir issued fake pay orders to whiten their black money.
The report is untrue and published with ill intentions, said Monotosh Chandra Roy, nominated representative of S Alam Group.
S Alam Group thinks that the reporter published the report with a misunderstanding of the whole process.
In the report, the reporter mentioned that the tax files were submitted following the provisions of the Income Tax Ordinance for money whitening. The reporter even contacted the tax commissioner to verify the background of this money whitening issue, which has been mentioned in the report.
According to the report, in both files, the return was submitted by issuing the pay order before the deadline of 30 June, 2021 as provided under Section 19AAAAA of the Income Tax Ordinance, 1984 for money whitening.
The reporter also pointed out, "According to the documents, Ashraful and Asadul failed to whiten this black money for the first time in the financial year 2020-21 through two pay orders of Tk25 crore. A few months later they succeeded in making the payment in the second attempt. This means that the first two pay orders were fake."
S. Alam Group claimed that this has been fabricated by the reporter.
The group explains as saying, “As the pay orders were submitted with the return was presented to the bank by the tax office for collection. The numbers were inadvertently stamped with tax office pay orders when they were given to the bank for collection. As the pay orders were not encashed, the tax office sent a letter requesting fresh pay orders. Accordingly, the defective pay orders were cancelled and fresh pay orders were issued; which were later properly collected.”
“As the said pay orders were collected late, the matter came under the notice of the new Joint Commissioner of Taxes. The Joint Commissioner of Taxes issued a notice under Section 120 of the Income Tax Ordinance, 1984 and sent a tax inspector to the bank to verify the authenticity of the pay order. The tax inspector personally visited the bank and verified the authenticity of the deposited pay orders and reported that the issued pay orders were correct. Given that the Joint Commissioner of Taxes has suspended the proceedings of that section,” said the group’s statement.
“As per the above statement, it appears that tax has been duly paid in the financial year 2020-21 by complying with all the provisions and facilities provided under Section 19AAAAA added to the Income Tax Ordinance, 1984. Since the provisions of Section 19AAAAA have been fully complied with, there is no question of tax evasion,” adds the statement.
