After I-T, ED investigates BBC over suspected forex breaches

New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED), responsible for investigating financial irregularities, has launched an inquiry into alleged foreign exchange rule violations by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), according to a Reuters report. This development follows the income-tax authorities’ survey on BBC’s Mumbai and Delhi offices in February.

In the latest investigation being conducted under India’s Foreign Exchange Management Act, the probe agency issued a notice to the BBC in March and questioned some employees earlier this month, the report said quoting the people aware of the matter.

There was no independent confirmation from the finance ministry, the ED, the Prime Minister’s Office or the BBC on the development. Emails sent to them seeking comments for the story remained unanswered at the time of publishing.

On 17 February, the I-T department issued a statement without explicitly mentioning the BBC, stating that a three-day survey conducted earlier at the business premises of a notable international media company revealed that the group’s entities’ profits were not proportional to their scale of operations in India. The department claimed that the survey—a method of gathering information through official visits, albeit less stringent than searches—uncovered evidence indicating unpaid taxes on specific remittances that were not reported as income in India by the group’s foreign entities. In response, the BBC stated it would continue to cooperate with the authorities. The tax department then used terms like ‘discrepancies’ and failure to withhold tax but did not use the word ‘tax evasion,’ which usually figures in statements after search and survey operations.

PTI reported on Thursday ED has called for documents and the recording of statements of some company executives under provisions of FEMA.

Earlier, several opposition politicians had linked the tax survey to a documentary aired by BBC in the UK on the 2002 Gujarat riots, which was critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the then chief minister of the state. India’s information and broadcasting ministry had disallowed sharing of links of the documentary on YouTube and Twitter.

A spokesperson for the ministry of external affairs had on 19 January said the BBC documentary was a “propaganda piece designed to push a discredited narrative”.