India, BBC accused of tax evasion. Opposition: “Punitive investigation started in suspicious times”

The opposition and other Indian press freedom organizations have targeted the investigation, which started at suspicious times and described as “punitive”. In fact, a few weeks earlier the TV had aired in the United Kingdom a documentary critical of the prime minister Narendra Modi. But the assumptions that the investigation involving the Bbc are an attempt to intimidate the media remain to be proven. The Ministry of Finances Indian accused the British broadcaster of evasion taxstating that it didn’t fully declare the come in eh profits resulting from its operations in the country. Tax officials found evidence that “taxes have not been paid on some remittances which have not been declared as income in India by the group’s foreign entities,” the ministry said in a statement. The Indian tax authorities Thursday evening concluded three days of searches in the offices of New Delhi e Mumbai of the British broadcaster.

BBC employees and journalists were only allowed out of their offices on Thursday late nightand they let it be known that some of their telephone e computer They were cloned give it detectives.
The search sparked heated reactions in the country: Gauran Bhatiathe spokesman of the BJP, the premier’s party, explicitly accused the Bbc of “spitting venom on India”. British public TV is cooperating with the authorities, while the largest union of Indian journalists (Editors Guild of India) and the Indian branch of CPJ Asia (Committee to Protect Journalist) have expressed on their accounts Twitter concerned criticism of the timing and implications of the operation.

(pictured: a security man outside the BBC headquarters in New Delhi)