S Alam Group, the country's largest industrial conglomerate, issued a statement protesting the 'false and motivated report' published against Ashraful Alam and Asadul Alam in a national English daily.
In the report published in that daily on September 18, it was claimed that Ashraful Alam and Asadul Alam Mahir resorted to irregularities through fake 'pay orders'.
Monotosh Chandra Roy, nominated representative of S Alam Group, said the report was published with false and ulterior motives.
S Alam Group feels that the reporter has published the report by misunderstanding the entire process.
In that report, the reporter mentioned that the tax file was submitted following the provisions of Income Tax Ordinance to launder black money. The reporter even contacted the Commissioner of Taxes to verify the context of the money laundering issue. According to the report, in both the files, the returns were submitted by issuing pay orders before 30.06.2021 as provided under Section 19AAAA of the Income Tax Ordinance, 1984 for money laundering.
The reporter also mentioned, 'According to the documents, Ashraful and Asadul failed to whiten this black money for the first time through two pay orders of Tk. 25 crores in the financial year 2020-21. However, after a few months, they made a second attempt and succeeded. This means that the first two pay orders were fake.
S Alam Group claimed that the reporter had published fabricated information.
As the pay order was submitted along with the return, S Alam said in the statement. And the tax office presented it to the bank for collection. The numbers were inadvertently stamped with tax office pay orders when given to the bank for collection. As the pay order is not cashed, the tax office sends a letter requesting a new pay order. Pursuant to their letter, the defective pay orders were canceled and fresh pay orders were issued which was given right later.
Since the said pay orders were collected late, the matter came to the notice of the new Joint Commissioner of Taxes. The Joint Commissioner issued a notice under Section 120 of the Income Tax Ordinance, 1984 and sent the tax inspector to the bank to verify the authenticity of the pay order. The tax inspector personally visits the bank and verified the authenticity of the deposited pay order and obtains proof that the issued pay order is correct. As a result, the Joint Commissioner of Taxes suspended the proceedings under section 144.
According to the above statement, it is proved that tax has been duly paid for the financial year 2020-21 in compliance with all the provisions and benefits provided under Section 19AAAA added to the Income Tax Ordinance, 1984. As the provisions of Section 19AAAA have been fully complied with, the question of tax evasion does not arise.
The group also said in its statement that the reporter misunderstood the entire process. The report was published with his wrong information. So S Alam Group strongly protested the published news.