After Wednesday’s sabre-rattling against the Centre for unleashing Central investigating agencies to fight a proxy battle for the BJP in West Bengal, a much mellowed Mamata Banerjee on Thursday tamely followed the CBI directives to submit her party’s income-expenditure related papers from 2010 onwards.
The Trinamool Congress submitted a 150-page balance sheet to the CBI probing the “larger conspiracy” angle in the multi-crore chit fund scam. Among other things, the document included party’s income, from advertisements, donations, and not the least sales of paintings, sources said adding the investigators would scrutinise the papers before summoning party office-bearers if necessary.
The papers were no different from the ones submitted with the Income Tax Department, party sources said insisting the “the papers will uphold the story of Trinamool’s honesty.”
While addressing a huge rally, Banerjee had questioned the CBI’s jurisdiction to seek such papers adding “we have already submitted them to the Income Tax Department and the Election Commission and they can have them from there if need be. The CBI is a tool of the Centre to browbeat a poor party like us before the elections.”
Apart from stories generated on daily-basis about chit fund, Trinamool camaraderie latest revelations that forged audit reports were filed with the Income Tax Department and the Election Commission had unnerved the party leadership.
A media report shows that the balance sheet filed by the party from 2010 till 2014 was signed by a CA firm which was lying defunct for the past several years. This apart, the CA who had allegedly audited the balance sheet was suffering from Alzheimer’s for the past 4-5 years and did not even remember his real age let alone auditing such a huge financial document. His family members also denied of his having audited such a document or having even been approached by the Trinamool authorities in the past.
The “fake audit report” story seemed to open more cans of worms on Thursday with reports unearthing more such fake reports with Trinamool connections, sources said. According to reports, the balance sheet filed by the Trinetra and Jagatjanani companies were also signed by “fake auditors.”
A third company called Trilok had also surfaced on Thursday with “invisible directors” and “fake audit reports”, sources said adding all these companies had financial connections with the ruling outfit contributing several crores to the party fund particularly during the elections.
In fact, the auditor whose name was reportedly used by Trinetra for authenticating its balance sheet had reportedly threatened to move the court demanding action against the stated forgery, party sources said.
Meanwhile, adding to the West Bengal Chief Minister’s woes, the Election Commission of India had reportedly asked from the Institute of Chartered Accountants about the genuineness of the CA firm that had reportedly authenticated the Trinamool’s balance sheet from 2010-2014.
Though experts would not hazard guess they did not rule out the party being derecognised for filing false returns with the ECI.