The CBI on Monday questioned two senior officials of the Income Tax Department’s investigation wing, arrested in connection with the bribery racket busted by the agency even as the multi-location raids on chartered accountants (CA) — including a father and son — have yielded 4 kg gold and 130 kg silver.
The CBI had carried out the 24-hour multi-city searches that began on Saturday. The gold and silver jewellery recovered from the arrested CAs in Chennai was allegedly meant to be given to Income Tax officials as bribe for settling tax disputes.
During the searches, CBI also seized about Rs55 lakh in cash from another CA Devendra Mehta in Mumbai who is alleged to be an associate of the arrested father-son CAs Sanjay and Shreyas Bhandari. The CBI is suspecting that the cash was supposed to be delivered to various IT officials handling tax cases of businessmen. Mehta has not been arrested yet.
The agency sleuths quizzed the top investigation officials of the IT department on the modus operandi adopted by them and their connivance with the CAs besides the cases compromised in the process.
Sources said, the questioned IT officials have revealed that the arrested CAs would approach the IT officials on behalf of the businessmen seeking favourable settlement of pending income tax demand or cases, sources said.
Without divulging the identities of the officials questioned, the sources said the suspected officials further revealed said that the CAs would oblige the tax officials with expensive gifts including jewelries besides cash.
One of the two officials questioned had allegedly taken Rs10 lakh as bribe from arrested accused Sanjay Bhandari for settling a case in which the IT department had conducted searches and recovered valuable items including gold and silver.
The sources said the questioning of these I-T officials will continue on Tuesday even as the role a number of other officials are also under the scanner.
The agency, sources said, is investigating the larger conspiracy where IT officials, CAs and businessmen acted in connivance with each other for settling tax probe in lieu of bribe.
The CBI will soon move the special court seeking custody of Sanjay Bhandari for subjecting him to custodial interrogation. Bhandari was sent to judicial custody after his arrest on Saturday.