ED slaps Rs 3.44 Cr fine on BBC India

New Delhi: Over alleged violations of the provisions of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), the Enforcement Department (ED) imposed a Rs 3.44 crore fine on BBC World Service India, the British Broadcasting Corporation’s Indian arm. ED also slapped an additional penalty of Rs 5,000 per day from 15 October 2021 till the date of compliance with the norms of the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on the broadcaster, reports The Print.

It was around two years ago, the central probe agency lodged a case against the company. The FEMA case came after a “survey” of the BBC’s offices in New Delhi and Mumbai by teams of the Income Tax Department in February 2023.

After the said survey, the IT department said that it collected several pieces of evidence pertaining to the operation of the organisation—which indicates that tax has not been paid on certain remittances which have not been disclosed as income in India by the foreign entities of the company.

According to The Print’s sources, ED claimed that its probe found violations of the maximum cap of 26 per cent as mandated by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade for digital media in September 2019 when the Union government introduced a new sub-category of ‘Digital Media‘ under the ‘Broadcasting Content Services’ category.

An ED official told the news agency that BBC WS (World Service) India, which is a 100% FDI company engaged in uploading/ streaming news and current affairs through digital media, did not reduce their FDI to 26% and kept it at 100% in gross violation of regulations issued by Government of India.

_{Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.}