Links with Chennai CA exposed Income Tax officers

Chennai: The CBI's nationwide raids on the premises of income tax officials on Wednesday can be traced back to the arrest of a joint commissioner of income tax in January 2015 in Chennai when he was accepting a bribe of Rs 8 lakh from a chartered accountant. Since then the CBI had been watching Sanjay Bhandari and his two sons and found income tax officials across the country had been receiving favours in various forms from his firm, sources said.

The search resulted in the seizure of documents of properties worth a
few crore rupees, gold weighing over 4 kgs etc, but sources indicated that this yield from the raids did not come a surprise for the officers as the 'suspects' were already in the 'agreed list' - a confidential document prepared by vigilance and CBI on all officers who are suspected to be of doubtful integrity. 

"Though it is confidential list, a majority of the officers will be aware if their names are in that list or not," a source revealed. Once the name of an officer is in the agreed list, he has the chance to start 'cleaning up' his office, house and computers, sources noted. Sanjay Bhandari and his two chartered accountant sons reportedly did liaison for many corporate companies with I-T officers, who were ready recipients of free air tickets and five star luxury stay, beside huge bribes, of course.

The CBI on Wednesday in Chennai had raided three I-T officers, namely  T H Vijayalakhsmi, commissioner of income tax (audit), S Murali Mohan, additional commissioner of income tax (corporate range II) and Aroon Prasad, deputy commissioner of income tax (exceptions) after registering a case against nine senior I-T officials across the country, besides the three chartered accounts in Chennai.  Of the nine I-T officials in the net, as many as seven had either worked or are working in Chennai.