I-T dept grills Karnataka minister Shivakumar in tax evasion case
Bengaluru, Jan 3: Senior Karnataka minister D K Shivakumar was Thursday grilled for about three hours by the Income Tax department for alleged tax evasion, officials said.
Shivakumar, a frontline Congress leader in the state, was summoned for questioning as part of a "routine process" following searches at various properties linked to him on August 2, department sources said.
The minister had already appeared before I-T officials twice in July and August last year.
The searches were conducted after Shivakumar hosted 44 Gujarat Congress MLAs at a resort on the city outskirts to forestall alleged attempts by the BJP to poach them ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls which the then Congress president Sonia Gandhi's political secretary Ahmed Patel won.
Last September, the Enforcement Directorate had registered a money laundering case against him and a few others for allegedly indulging in hawala transactions.
The I-T department had accused Shivakumar and his associate SK Sharma of transporting "huge" amounts of unaccounted cash on a "regular basis" through hawala channels with the help of three other accused.
The other accused are Sachin Narayan, Anjaneya Hanumanthaiah and N Rajendra.
Narayan is a business partner of Shivakumar and Sharma is the proprietor of Sharma Transports, which runs a fleet of luxury and passenger buses and provides transport services to various concerns and individuals on rental basis, IT department had said in its complaint.
Hanumanthaiah, an employee posted at Karnataka Bhavan in New Delhi, was allegedly responsible for storing and handling unaccounted cash of Shivakumar in the national capital, it had said.
Rajendra, a caretaker at Karnataka Bhavan, also works for Sharma, apart from looking after the immovable properties of Shivakumar and Sharma, it said.
Unaccounted cash of about Rs 20 crore was seized during raids in New Delhi and Bengaluru last August, and I-T officials said the money was "directly relatable" to Shivakumar.
Shivakumar, however, claimed the I-T department was targeting him and not letting him "breathe", but asserted he would fight the case legally.
A special court had granted him conditional bail in this case some time back and will hear the matter again on September 20.
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First direct US-Venezuela commercial flight in 7 years to land in Caracas
Caracas (Venezuela) (AP): The first direct commercial flight between the United States and Venezuela is scheduled to land on Thursday in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, seven years after the US Department of Homeland Security ordered an indefinite suspension, citing security concerns.
The resumption of a commercial flight between the two countries comes in the wake of the US capture of Nicolás Maduro in a stunning nighttime raid on his residence in Caracas, Venezuela's capital, in early January.
It also comes a month after the US formally reopened its embassy in Caracas following the restoration of full diplomatic relations with the South American country.
Flight AA3599 operated by Envoy Air, a subsidiary of American Airlines, was scheduled to depart from Miami at 10:16 a.m. local time and arrive three hours later in the Venezuelan capital, returning to Florida later in the afternoon.
Earlier, the airline said a second daily flight between Miami and Caracas will start on May 21.
In late January, US President Donald Trump said he informed Venezuela's acting President Delcy Rodríguez that he would open up all commercial airspace over Venezuela, allowing Americans to visit.
“American citizens will be very shortly able to go to Venezuela, and they'll be safe there,” Trump said at the time.
The flights mark the resumption of nonstop travel between the US and Venezuela for the first time since diplomatic ties were severed in 2019. For the past seven years, passengers have relied on international airlines and indirect routes through neighbouring Latin American countries.
In January, when the airline announced the resumption of flights it said it would give customers the opportunity to reunite with families and pursue new business opportunities.
American Airlines was the last US airline flying to Venezuela. It suspended flights in 2019 between Miami and Caracas, as well as flights to the oil hub city of Maracaibo. Delta and United Airlines pulled out in 2017 amid a political crisis that forced millions to flee the country.
