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The Income Tax Department has for the first time brought Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in the picture in the National Herald case. In this Income Tax Assessment Order for Young Indian - the Gandhi family-controlled company - the departmental has sought to point out that besides Sonia Gandhi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka had a key role in the firm acquiring assets worth Rs 2,000 crore of Associated Journals Limited(AJL) that publishes the National Herald newspaper.
The department has termed as "totally bogus" the Congress' claim of giving a Rs 90-crore loan to the AJL and described the latter's takeover by Young Indian as "premeditated scheme of tax evasion", fraudulent, and hawala in nature.
"To fulfill the objective of acquiring 100 per cent shares of the AJL, one majority shareholders of the assesses (Young Indian), Rahul, along with Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, had purchased additional 47,513 and 2,62,411 shares through Rattan Deep Trust and Janhit Nidhi Trust respectively without complying to Companies Act," said the IT department.
In its 105 page Assessment Order, the IT department has also declared Young Indian's actual taxable income to be more than Rs 414 crore and has since gone on to cancel the firm's tax exemption certificate.
The department has stated that the AICC office bearers and Young Indian shareholders devised a scheme involving pre-ordinate artificial and fraudulent steps to take over AJL with a two-fold objective: One to obtain valuable benefits embodied in business assets of the AJL; and second, not pay any tax on business income of earning such benefit. It pegged the fair market value of AJL's properties in New Delhi, Mumbai, Panchkula, Lucknow and Patna to be 2,000 crore.
The Assessment Order dated December 27 served to the Young Indian was produced by main petitioner in the National Herald case, BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, before the Metropolitan Magistrate to prove that this complaints against all the accused were totally ratified by the IT department.