Mumbai: Actor Sonu Sood finally came clean on the Income Tax raids that took place at his residence in Mumbai last week. The actor talked to a news channel and said that he has done his paperwork. Sonu said that each penny that his foundation has received will be used to help people as he is totally dedicated to the service of the people.
Speaking to NDTV on Monday, Sonu Sood kept his silence on whether the raids at his house were politically motivated after he met Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal recently. However, he maintained that he is not driven to politics right now and whenever that happens in the future, he would have done his complete homework by then. Sonu also revealed that he has been offered the Rajya Sabha seat twice by different political parties but he understands that he will not be able to help everyone the way he is doing right now if he agrees to join a political party.
Explaining how he impressed the I-T department officials by presenting the documents in the best manner, Sonu said, “I asked them – have you ever seen this kind of documentation, details, paperwork? They said no…they were also happy with whatever they were seeing. They said it was the smoothest four days of raids for them.”
The actor has been accused of evading around Rs 20 crore through his foundation. However, he maintained that all the money is going directly to the beneficiaries and he is not using even a ‘single dollar’ for himself. “I have 54,000 unread emails, thousands of messages on WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter. It will not even take 18 hours to finish 18 crores. But I have to make sure every single penny is used in a proper way, for a genuine and needy person,” he said.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) had earlier said that the foundation set up by Sonu Sood to help the needy has so far collected donations of Rs 18.94 crore from April last year till this month out of which around Rs 1.9 crore has been used for the people so far. The officials also alleged that the funds of Rs 2.1 crore have been raised by the charity foundation from overseas donors on a crowdfunding platform which stands in violation of the FCRA regulations.
