“The Income Tax Authorities are currently at the BBC offices in New Delhi and Mumbai and we are fully cooperating. We hope to have this situation resolved as soon as possible,” the BBC said on Twitter.
According to reports, the employees of the broadcasting corporation were asked not to use their computer systems and phones, including their personal ones.
Reports quoting sources said the employees working in the afternoon shift at the BBC’s Delhi office were asked to work from home, while those present in the office were asked to leave early.
Reports stated that the searches at the BBC offices were related to allegations of International Taxation and Transfer Pricing irregularities.
Earlier on the day, the I-T department official reached the BBC office in Delhi between 11.30 a.m. to 12 p.m.
In Mumbai, a team of Income Tax Department sleuths carried out a ‘survey’ at the global media conglomerate BBC’s Mumbai studios in the afternoon. The BBC studio is situated in a commercial hub near the Bandra Kurla Complex where offices of several national and multinational companies are also located.
The sleuths are understood to have seized the mobiles, laptops, tablets of the staffers present there, though exact details of the investigations by the central probe agency were not available.
A large number of media persons and photographers, besides many curious onlookers out for the lunch break, converged outside the studio building awaiting the nitty-gritties of the ITD operation inside the BBC studio.
IANS