Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: A major tax evasion by a private university was busted by the Directorate of Intelligence & Investigation Inland Revenue Islamabad after they raided the Preston University’s Islamabad campus. The university operates through its several campuses across the country. The intelligence wing of inland revenue had reported that the university had been concealing its revenue from tax authorities for many years. The team lead by Assistant Director, Mehdi Hasan and Junaid Murtaza conducted a raid on the head office at the Islamabad campus of the university and impounded computers, records and servers etc. According to a source at the intelligence department of the FBR the impounded records and bank accounts of the university confirmed suppression of receipts to the tune of billions of rupees. A preliminary analysis of the records has revealed that the university had been maintaining many national tax numbers to split the taxable income and mention parallel financial accounts to deceive the tax authorities. But a detailed investigation is under way and will take a couple of months to know the exact amount of the tax evaded. According to the FBR, Preston University had shown 11 dummy campuses in their tax returns for tax evasion but the main source of activity is the H-9 campus. Also it has been revealed that the university concealed many bank accounts apart from those they mentioned in the tax returns. Daily Times tried to contact the university authorities many times to seek their comments on the same issue but no one responded.