Nagpur Firm & #8217;S Properties Attached Over Tax Default
In the biggest case of sales tax default in Nagpur in the past forty years, the sales tax department has attached factory premises, a bank account and other immovable properties of Moti Electric Industries Ltd, claiming dues of over Rs 10 crore.
Notices have been issued for auctioning the property even as Deepak Lakhiani, main promoter of the electric cable manufacturing unit, has abandoned the project and is absconding.
The sales tax department has pasted notice to this effect on his known addresses here and has seized the factory premises.
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The last major case of sales tax default was by Somras Distilleries with a default of Rs 2.50 crore. The department had auctioned the liquor factory and a posh bungalow belonging to its promoter Laxmikant Gupta. The same fate awaits Moti Electric.
Moti Electric, which manufactured cables, started operation in 1983 and it was headquartered at Mumbai. Its major client was the Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB).
It availed of benefits under the package scheme of incentives and was exempted from sales tax payment from April 4, 1984, to June 30, 1993.
The company reportedly was a flourishing one and was at its peak in 1994-95 and 1995-96 when it registered a turnover of Rs 25 crore and Rs 48 crore, respectively.
However, it was during this period that it started defaulting on sales tax payments. From 1993 - the first year when it was supposed to start paying sales tax - till 1997, its dues mounted to nearly Rs 10 crore.
Despite repeated attempts for tax realisation by the department, the company managed to avoid paying up by showing it was making losses, sources said.
In order to avoid payments, Moti Electric, in 1998, approached the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) to declare the company as a