CBI case against Chief Commissioner of Income Tax, Kerala

CBI today said it has registered a criminal case against Chief Commissioner of Income Tax, Kerala, Anil Goel, his wife and three others for their alleged involvement in a tax evasion bribery racket.
A criminal case was registered in CBI Anti-Corruption Branch, Cochin yesterday against Goel, Sarath S, Income Tax Officer working under him, Goel's wife Juhi, Koshy K I, Chartered Accountant and Balachandran, Managing Director of Ramachandran Textiles, Thiruvananthapuram "for commission of offences of criminal conspiracy, criminal misconduct, abetment and demand of illegal gratification by public servants on the basis of a source information," CBI said in a release here.

The information disclosed that they had entered into a criminal conspiracy to collect illegal gratification from various Income Tax assesses under their jurisdiction to extend undue favours and also to protect the interest of those assesses in IT matters pending before them, the agency said.
They demanded an illegal gratification of Rs 10 lakh from Ramachandran Textiles, Thiruvananthapuram, an assesse,which gave the amount to Sarath through Koshy on Oct 13, 2015, CBI said.
The money was subsequently seized the next day during the CBI probe into a case registered against Sailendra Mamidi, Principal Commissioner Income Tax, Sarath and others, it said.

"Information also disclosed that the accused public servants adopted modus operandi of transferring huge amount of bribe money collected by them from various businessmen to Mumbai and to deliver the same to Juhi Goel, wife of Anil Goel through some income tax assesses under their jurisdiction," CBI said.

In September/October 2015 they transferred about Rs 29 lakh to Mumbai in this manner, it said.
CBI alleged that information prima facie disclosed that the five, acting in nexus with chartered accountants/auditors representing business houses, had received illegal gratification of huge amount to protect them from taking measures to detect evasion of Income Tax or extending undue favours in pending income tax matters of those assesses.

"As such these illegal activities of the accused public servants of Income Tax Department and others are being investigated in order to unearth the suspected existence of a racket involved in the fraudulent practices," it said.