India’s income tax regulatory body, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has announced that it raided five locations including offices and private residences connected to a foreign company, ZTE India, over suspected tax evasion and discrepancies. The places affected by the raid are the corporate office of the company, the residences of the foreign director, the chief financial officer (CFO), the company secretary, and the cash handler of the Chinese-owned company.

All the locations were in New Delhi and the search was aimed at establishing the tax liability status of ZTE and hundreds of its employees over the years. The search may have yielded a trove of evidence some degree of tax evasion and discrepancies. The accusation also includes the failure of ZTE to deduct tax at source for several years. The amount of money involved in tax evasion is not yet clear but is believed to be huge. An official statement by the CBDT however did not directly name ZTE, although the allusion to the fact that the company was engaged in trading of telecom equipment, installation, and servicing of the equipment, leaves no one in doubt who this company was.

The tax compliance agency CBDT says it had recovered a large amount of evidence that indicates an elaborate and well-oiled scheme to evade the payment of valid taxes by the company. The company was also accused of deliberately not deducting TDS on the basis of the scrutiny of its expenses books. The investigation could span back to 2014 and begin on August 16. Several top officials of the company were questioned in relation to the raid, although no arrests were made.

The investigation is possibly linked to ZTE India’s business dealings with state-owned telecom operator BSNL with some regularities observed. The searches could also be linked to financial irregularities and potential issues linked to the BSNL entered by ZTE. The regulator says it has already recovered incriminating evidence in the form of electronic data and paper documents.

Expatriate employees were also alleged to be trading illegally in medicines from India to China. ZTE has yet to respond to the accusations at this time.

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Chinese smartphone maker ZTE has released a video, via its Twitter handle, which teases an upcoming smartphone whose name was kept in the dark. The device is billed to go official in India any moment from now but has been revealed to be the ZTE Blade A610 Plus.

The ZTE Blade A610 Plus moniker wasn’t explicitly mentioned in the video but the design which gives the idea of the device in question. According to report, the Blade A610 Plus comes with a spectacular 5,000mAh battery which would no doubt be one of its strongholds when it goes official.

Related: ZTE Hawkeye Disappointing Specs: ZTE Apologizes for Mistake

The smartphone is also tipped to launch with a 5.5-inch display with Full HD resolution (1080 pixels) while there is a MediaTek MT6750T chipset onboard. The device comes with 2GB of RAM as well as 16GB of storage space. Camera wise, there is a 13MP rear camera and an 8MP front camera on the smartphone, while the interface is provided by an Android .0 Marshmallow OS. The device also comes with support for 4G LTE.

"Hello again, India!" pic.twitter.com/kwFj0EGOoS

— ZTE India (@ZTEIndiaSocial) January 30, 2017

The ZTE Blade A610 Plus was teased by ZTE India on its official Twitter handle, and earlier on the company had scheduled a February 3 launch date. The Blade A610 Plus is expected to hit the India market as the main attraction of the launch event.

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As mobile phone manufacturers are trying their best to drop their prices, ZTE wants to focus on ‘value for money’. The Chinese Manufacturer has said that they want to focus on devices priced in the range of $100 – 200 which is equivalent to INR 6000-12000. They would use phones priced in the above mentioned range to drive their sales in India and form a place for them in the Indian smartphone market.

CEO of ZTE India, Mr Yuan Kang also said that India was a huge market and they were confident that their range of phones would definitely suit the Indian customer mind set. He added that they were planning to launch around 5 handsets online and 3-4 models offline.

ZTE has recently launched their new model, the V5 to be sold online on Snapdeal.com. This phone is priced at INR 10,999. The ZTE V5 has a 5 inch screen and is powered by a 1.2 Ghz quad core processor. They prime feature of this handset is the 13 mega pixel rear camera and the 5 mega pixel front camera. Other features include 4 GB internal storage (expandable upto 32 GB) and a 2,400 mAh battery.

Sale of smartphones in India has grown by almost three-fold to reach around 44 million in 2013 due to the availability of pocket friendly devices brought out by firms like Micromax and Karbonn. India’s market is led by Samsung and companies like Micromax, Karbon and LAVA also have significant shares. Google is also going to launch its budget handset in India soo which will further intensify the competition.

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