TN’s bond turns out to be fake
Chennai: The international bills of exchange with a face value of US$ 5 billion seized by income tax officials from a businessman from Tirupur have turned outto be fake, according to I-T sources .
The Dubai office of Barclays Bank which was asked to check the authenticity of the bills, had found they were not genuine, they disclosed. “We have more evidence now to show the businessman, T.M. Ramalingam that his bills are fake. We hope to pin his lies when he appears before the investigators on Friday,” said a senior I-T officer. It was the Barclays Bank in Chennai which informed the IT investigators about the suspicious bills of exchange, originating from Ramalingam, doing the rounds in TN.
Armed with the information, a decoy team of the department approached Ramalingam on Dec. 31. “Our team asked for a bill of exchange of smaller denomination than it was carrying. But he said he dealt only with bigger denominations and produced his billion- dollar bills. The team seized all the “5 billion” dollar bills from him. We believe he cheated people by giving them fake international bills of exchange, but was exposed when they tried to exchange them at a foreign bank,” said an income tax official.
Ramalingam has , however, claimed that he received the bills from an exchange in Brazil after swapping his 90 year-old gold bonds for them through an agent in that country.
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