The Central Bureau of Investigation is currently looking into a “revised tax returns” fraud involving several unknown employees of Infosys Technologies, IT department officials and one fake CA from Bengaluru. The scam, which was found out by the Income Tax department in late January saw 1010 revised tax returns with the use of forged documents in the name of 250 taxpayers of various private firms. Infosys is the vendor for the IT department to process e-returns.
An FIR said that some Income Tax officials along with a few staffers of the company and a fake chartered accountant, Nagesh Shastri, was filing the returns. An Infosys spokesperson sad the company did not want to comment without seeing the FIR. Shastri had filed the fraudulent returns along with unknown officials of the IT department, and other private persons, claiming £500,000. The FIR said, “The processing of e-returns is outsourced to Infosys Technologies Limited, who validate the returns in bulk and generate list of cases where refunds have to be approved. The Assessing Officers of the IT department posted in CPC give the approval for release of refunds to assessees through their bank accounts.”
The CBI found that the assessment system tags revised returns and gives pop up messages to draw the attention of the person processing them and also to assessing officers who approve refunds. “The unknown officials of Infosys Technologies who were entrusted with the work of processing the returns and the IT officials at CPC, who were authorised to approve issue of refunds are suspected to have connived with Shastri in processing these revised returns based on false information or documents knowingly and issued income tax refunds,” the FIR reads.
Having been assisting several private sector salaried employees to file returns of income over the past few years, Shastri had access to their used identity and passwords. He would file revised returns of income claiming refund, in cases of assessees whose original returns were already processed by the CPC. “All these revised returns are filed with inflated claims on account of payments towards housing loan,” the FIR read.
