Management Guru Arindham Chaudhri arrested for tax fraud

Management guru – Arindham Chaudhuri was arrested on Friday by the CGST South Delhi Commissionerate for wrongfully claiming Central Value Added Tax (CENVAT) of service tax credit of about Rs 23 crore in the pre-GST regime.
According to the sources, Chaudhuri who is director of Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) and another director of his company – Gurudas Malik Thakur were arrested under Section 89 of the Finance Act and a local court has sent them to 14-days of judicial custody.

Sources said both of them have been arrested in the case, which involves an amount of more than Rs 22.5 crore. They were produced before duty magistrate Jyoti Maheshwari in Patiala House Court. The probe is on about properties held by Chaudhuri and his company in Delhi and other cities in the country as well as overseas.

Chaudhuri shot to limelight as management guru after he opened multiple chains of his management institute IIPM. He also became a regular on television channels. Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan was also the brand ambassador of IIPM. Other celebrities and politicians were also associated with Chaudhri in past.

Sources said Chaudhuri owns 90% of the closely held company while the rest is held by his wife. In 2018, an indirect tax tribunal upheld the entire service tax demand against IIPM saying there was no scope to exclude “academic courses” conducted by the institute from the levy of the tax demand. Sources said the probes would also include the alleged service tax evasion angle.

Referring to the order of the tribunal, officials had said the total tax demand including penalty and interest could be over Rs 200 crore.

This is not the first time when Chaudhuri was arrested as on March 14, 2020 the Delhi Police arrested him for allegedly submitting a forged medical certificate when police asked him to join an investigation last year in connection with a 2016 case.