26k crore US Treasury Bonds seized near Tirupur

In perhaps the mother of all its hauls, the Income Tax Department has seized United States Treasury bonds or T-bonds valu­ed at an eye-popping Rs 26,000 crore from a little known “shares and debentures trader” in Dharapuram, a rural town located 51 km from Tirupur.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes is now investigating the matter.

Ramalingam, the man in the eye of a storm, claimed he was a copra and groundnuts dealer. His house was raided a couple of days ago after officials of a Barclays Bank branch where he had gone to liquidate the US bonds grew suspicious and alerted the Income Tax office in Chennai.

Officers of the I-T Department (Chennai and Coimbatore circles) in a joint operation raided the house and seized bonds worth $5 billion, fixed deposit worth several crore rupees and some “contract agreements”.

“We learnt that Ramalingam is a mediator in financial dealings and has traded in shares and debentures. He is also into gold trading in Singapore and has travelled to nearly 60 countries. He had purchased most of these bonds, which were floated over a decade ago with varying maturity periods of 20 to 30 years, in 2009. Some of the bonds were to expire in 2013, which is why he had approached some banks to liquidate them,” a well-placed source in the I-T Department told Express on Wednesday.

Going by Ramalingam’s rustic looks and his modest house, the raid party initially suspected that the bonds could be fictitious. However, on scrutiny, they appeared to be genuine. Enforcement agency officials in Delhi also ruled out the benami angle and claimed that they found a Tiruchy connection to the transaction.

“He has frequently travelled to Brazil, China and Myanmar with no strong source of funding. In the normal course, people don’t hold high value T-bonds for a long period. Preliminary investigation suggests he has been dealing in it for years,” an I-T officer said. “We suspect that we are sitting on a massive financial scam,” he added.