SOHEL PARVEZ

The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has detected tax evasion amounting to over Tk 58 crore carried out by five persons and their companies, including a former president of the Chittagong Stock Exchange (CSE).

The NBR’s Central Intelligence Cell found that former CSE president Fakhor Uddin Ali Ahmed and four of his relatives, including his son, did not pay the actual amount of taxes that were due from the income year 2017-18 to the income year 2023-24, according to officials.

The taxpayers imported coal and stone using their names but showed the imports in the income tax file of a company, M/S Fakhor Uddin Ali Ahmed.

By doing so, the taxpayers did not show their investments in their tax files and avoided paying a wealth tax surcharge, the NBR’s field office said.

Those implicated are Falah Uddin Ali Ahmed, Salah Uddin Ahmed, Foyez Hasan Ferdous and Fakhorus Salehin Nahian.

The NBR said these individuals collectively evaded Tk 50.83 crore in surcharges and related fines during the period.

The tax authority also found that the taxpayers concealed their actual taxable incomes by hiding their rental income from a sports complex in the capital’s Bashundhara Residential Area.

They also failed to disclose the purchase of luxury apartments in Gulshan. Additionally, they did not show the actual investment in the purchase of commercial space in Gulshan through International Securities Limited, a brokerage house.

As such, the NBR detected that they had dodged taxes amounting to around Tk 8. 26 crore.

However, the allegations were refuted.

Fakhorus Salehin Nahian said they did not evade any tax as far as his knowledge. “There might have been a mistake,” he said, adding that the NBR’s field office did not issue any demand notice for the tax.

Instead, it moved to freeze their bank accounts.

Nahian said the firm M/S Fakhor Uddin Ali Ahmed was awarded by the NBR as the second-highest taxpayer in the firm category in the fiscal year 2022-23.

“Our files came under audits by the tax office,” he said, adding that they will follow due legal process.