The Income Tax department officials are conducting raids at various locations related to mining manufacturer VV Minerals and its owner Vaikundarajan.
Searches are underway at 100 locations in Tamil Nadu.
Over 130 ITD officials are conducting the operation with assistance from security and police personnel, they said.
They said the companies that are being searched are involved in mining, processing and export of beach sand minerals in an alleged illegal manner that led the taxman to probe tax evasion charges against them.
The alleged illegal profits earned through this, they said, was subsequently ploughed for investments into other businesses of these groups like spinning mills, sugar mills, hotels, engineering colleges and some blue metal businesses.
Some overseas transactions of these companies, made in alleged violation of tax laws, is also under the scanner of the department and the sleuths are looking for documents, to substantiate these charges, during the raids, they added.
On March 2017, as many as 15 godowns run by sand mining company, V V Minerals, in the Tirunelveli district were sealed for allegedly trying to export mineral sand illegally, using forged documents.
Deputy Collector, Vishnu Vardhan inspected the godowns and factories owned by the company and sealed them for storing illegally mined sand, officials had then said.
Reports added that assistant director of Mines, Krishna Mohan was suspended for allegedly forging the signature of the Tuticorin District Collector, Ravikumar for facilitating the export.
In 2013, an inquiry committee led by IAS officer Gagandeep Singh Bedi had gone into alleged irregularities in beach sand mining in Tuticorin, Tirunelveli and Kanyakumari districts, and had submitted a report.
(With inputs from agencies)
