Adani, Essar get DRI notice for overvaluing imports.

MUMBAi: The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence has issued show-cause notices to the Adani Group and the Essar group companies for inflating the value of capital goods imported for power plants.

DRI is also believed to have prepared another show-cause notice, which is exp-ected to be issued in the next two days to ADAG's Reliance Infrastructure for allegedly inflating the value of coal imports.

Officials said the overvaluation in the case of Adani and Essar was Rs 800 crore and Rs 500 crore, respectively. In the case of ADAG, the overvaluation is pegged at Rs 350 crore. TOI was the first to report on the alleged violations in December 2014.

DRI has been investigating 40 power generating companies and traders for the past couple of years. According to DRI, some prominent public and private sector companies inflated the import value of coal beyond that prevailing in the international market. Some companies are also being probed for allegedly inflating the value of imported capital goods. According to DRI, power tariffs were fixed based on the inflated values, which resulted in consumers paying higher charges.

DRI has alleged that Adani Group and Essar have imported capital goods through intermediaries in tax havens. It claims that the companies' objective was to siphon off money abroad while availing higher power tariff compensation based on artificially-inflated costs of imported coal or capital goods.

While the coal was directly shipped from Indonesian ports to importers in India, the import invoices were routed through one or more intermediaries based in a third country such as Singapore, Dubai, Hong Kong and British Virgin Islands. These intermediary firms appear to be either subsidiaries of Indian importers or their front companies. This was the modus operandi used in the import of capital goods too. Investigations into overvaluation by other companies are still in progress.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has stayed an order of Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (APTEL) that directed the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission to award compensatory tariffs to Adani Power and Coastal Gujarat Power (Tata group) based on power purchase agreements for their power plants in Mundra. APTEL has also disallowed compensatory tariff to Adani Group's power plant at Tiroda in Maharashtra and Kawai in Rajasthan.

Source : timesofindia.indiatimes.com