India's Income Tax (IT) Department has carried out raids at the regional offices of Huawei, the news agency Press Trust of India reported on Wednesday.
The simultaneous raids at Huawei’s offices in the cities of Gurugram (Haryana state), Delhi, and Bengaluru (Karnataka state) began Tuesday evening. Indian officials say that the Shenzhen-headquartered telecommunications giant has been targeted over allegations of tax evasion.
Officials have scrutinised Huawei’s financial documents, account books, and other company records to look into its Indian businesses and overseas transactions.
The tax sleuths also seized some records during the raids.
The Chinese company has said it remains “compliant” with Indian law.
"We have been informed of the visit of the Income Tax team to our office and also of their meeting with some personnel. Huawei is confident our operations in India are firmly compliant to all laws and regulations. We will approach related Government departments for more information and fully cooperate as per the rules and regulations and follow the right procedure", Huawei said in a statement.
The raids against Huawei began just a day after India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) announced a ban on 54 Chinese apps belonging to companies such as Tencent Holdings and Alibaba Group Holding.
“These 54 apps allegedly obtain various critical permissions and collect sensitive user data. These collected real-time data are being misused and transmitted to servers located in hostile country", the ministry said in a statement on Monday.
The banned apps are duplicate versions of Chinese apps that India already banned in 2020, citing “national security” concerns. Since 2020, India has banned more than 200 Chinese apps, including more popular ones like TikTok and the online multiplayer action game PUBG.
In December last year, Indian tax inspectors also raided the offices of Chinese mobile firms Xiaomi, OPPO, and OnePlus at 24 different locations across the country.
According to local media reports, the three Chinese firms were suspected by Indian authorities of having “unaccounted income” worth nearly $865 million.
The Chinese Embassy in New Delhi at the time said that it had always required its companies to “operate in compliance with laws and regulations overseas”.
The recent actions against Chinese companies by Indian authorities come against the backdrop of the border standoff between the two countries' militaries in the disputed eastern Ladakh region.
The yet-to-be-resolved border dispute turned deadly after Indian and People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops clashed with each other in the Galwan Valley in June 2020.
Although India has warned China that the standoff will affect the overall bilateral relations and spill over into other matters, Beijing has consistently urged New Delhi to place the border dispute at an appropriate level in the overall ties.