Through bogus TDS refunds, Three Income Tax staff misappropriated millions of dollars; CBI investigations

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• Jun 27, 2022 | Kabir Chakraborty

Abhay Kant, Saurabh Singh, and Rohit Kumar are three I-T officials who have been named by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with the case, along with nine people who received refunds.

Digital Desk: According to sources, the CBI has opened a
probe into three income tax department employees for allegedly facilitating
false TDS refunds for a number of assesses by abusing senior officers' access
to the system. The investigation agency filed the FIR in response to a
complaint from the Joint Commissioner of Income Tax, Muzaffarnagar, against
three group C Income Tax officials who were accused of defrauding the agency by
allegedly using RSA tokens of assessing officers to calculate and produce
fictitious refunds of Tax Deducted at Source (TDS).

A user's password is automatically changed every 60 seconds
with RSA tokens, which are distinctive and time-synchronous solutions.

They
claimed that after receiving the FIR, the agency carried out a number of
searches.

Abhay
Kant, Saurabh Singh, and Rohit Kumar are three I-T officials who have been
named by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with the case,
along with nine people who received refunds.

The tax
department claims that the officials generated false refunds payable to 11
assessees on the system and authenticated them using the assessing officers'
RSA tokens without authorization between August 1, 2020, and August 25, 2021,
until the scam was discovered.

According
to them, the scheme came to light when one of the assessing officials noticed
computations of refunds under section 154 of the I-T Act for assessees outside
of his range.

Orders
under this section are issued when changes to orders or processes are
necessary, either at the assessee's request or at the assessing officer's
initiative when a mistake needs to be addressed and is obvious in records, it
was claimed.

These
refunds were reported on the outdated AST (Assessment Information System)
rather than the current ITBA (Income Tax Business Application), where the
procedure has been moved since 2016.

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The report claimed that out of the entire sum
taken, "almost Rs 35 lakh was transferred back to government accounts by
the accused officials as taxes against demand, and Rs 22 lakh was recovered by
assessing officers through coercive actions against the beneficiaries."

"A
total of Rs 57.31 lakh has so far been recovered, either by the scam-related
employees or by the assessing officers through the attachment of assessees'
accounts. The total sum still owing, with accrued interest, is calculated to be
Rs. 94.39 lakh "a complaint was made. "Times New Roman"">