Plus Max CEO held for fraud at duty-free shop in Thiruvananthapuram

KOCHI: Customs sleuths on Saturday arrested R Sundaravasan, the CEO of Plus Max that operates the duty-free shop at Thiruvananthapuram airport, for alleged tax evasion to the tune of Rs 6 crore.
The customs had earlier shut down the duty-free shop after finding irregularities and Sundaravasan was summoned for interrogation on Friday. He was later presented before Ernakulam additional chief judicial magistrate court (economic offences) and remanded in judicial custody.



TOI had, on April 23, reported the Customs probe into leakage of traveller data, including passport numbers, from the airlines manifest at the airport for illegal purchase of goods from the duty-free shop.

It was found that details of 13,000 international travellers were compromised for purchases from the shop run from September last year to April this year.

An official communique from the department said the liquor imported without duty was meant to be sold only to international passengers within eligible quantities.

Probe revealed liquor was illegally sold

Our investigation revealed that they had illegally sold or diverted foreign made foreign liquor from the shop and they manipulated the sale details. They made fabricated returns and submitted the same to the department. They also destroyed the original sale invoice copies and made up a story that their system was hacked to avoid submitting them. The hacking argument was ruledout by C-DAC,” it said.

Customs sleuths said the agency had even used passport details of infants to divert the foreign liquor to the grey market. Sources said there were also huge differences in the amount of foreign currency received and deposited by the company. Apart from the CEO, the customs have summoned the MD of the firm and a customs superintendent who faced departmental action after it was found that he collected flight manifest from airline companies. They said the airport management was also under the scanner. Plus Max sources, however, stuck to their claim that their server was hacked leading to a loss of data.

“An FIR was filed with CBCID in Namakkal about the hacking after we found out IP addresses from other cities accessing our servers. It was after we filed a complaint in this regard that we were raided,” one of them said.