by admin | May 25, 2021 | News
Lucknow : A CBI team on Saturday arrested a Central Goods and Service Tax (CGST) commissioner from Kanpur along with six others in a bribery case, officials said.
The commissioner named Sansar Chand is accused of taking bribes from businessmen on a monthly and quarterly basis.
Police said other than the accused official, some inspectors and a group of private persons used to exert pressure on some institutions and businessmen and fleece them for money.
In its report, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said that others who operated with Sansar Chand included Ajay Srivastava, Aman Shah, Rajiv Singh Chandel — all three from Kanpur, and Amit Awasthi (from Rohini, Delhi), Aman Jain (Shivaji Park, Delhi) and Chandra Prakash (Punjabi Bagh, Delhi).
Wife of the arrested official Avinash Kaur has also been made an accused by the CBI. The agency has also accused the CGST commissioner of accepting highly expensive items, electronic goods at his Delhi residence from businessmen.
A source informed IANS that apparently the complaint was filed by a detergent manufacturer who was being asked to pay Rs 2 lakh per month to the commissioner.
Sansar Chand, a 1986 batch Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer, resides in the Customs Colony in Gujaini area of Kanpur. He was arrested from Faizabad district of Uttar Pradesh while the others were arrested from the union capital. The CBI has also arrested office staff Saurabh Pandey and a private operator Manish Sharma in the case.
The CBI has alleged that Chand and other officials were part of organised and systematic collection of illegal gratification.
The excise officials contacted various people through middleman Awasthi for extorting illegal gratification.
These payments pertained to either monthly or quarterly payments as protection money for omission of action by the Central Excise Department on such private parties, the CBI said.
The money was collected by public servants and were transferred systematically through hawala channel to Delhi through Aman Jain.
In certain instances, the bribe would be in form of items like “mobiles, refrigerators and expensive TVs”.
The probe agency has booked them under the charges of criminal conspiracy of Indian Penal Code and provisions of Prevention of Corruption Act.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : Congress leader Shakeel Ahmad on Sunday said the “theory” by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and CBI that former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and then Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran did something in tandem in the Aircel-Maxis case is too far-fetched.
In a tweet, the Congress leader said Chidambaram had strained relation with Maran.
“Attempts by PM Modi & Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to float a theory that Mr P Chidambaram and Mr DN Maran have done something in tandem to benefit each other in Aircel-Maxis Deal is too far fetched. Their strained relation was known to all of us, when they were in government. I was MoS with both of them,” said Ahmad in a tweet.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday searched the houses of Chidambaram and his son Karti in Delhi and Chennai in connection to the Aircel-Maxis case.
Following the raids Chidambaram had said that there is no FIR against him or his son in the Aircel-Maxis case.
“There is no predicate scheduled offence. Hence the ED has no jurisdiction. Yet the ED, at the instance of the government, continues to misuse its powers.
“I belong to the Opposition party. Let the government misuse the ED. I shall neither bend nor break and I shall continue to speak and write,” he said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Tejashwi Yadav
Ranchi : A special CBI court on Wednesday issued notices to former Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav and three others over their statements regarding RJD chief Lalu Prasad’s conviction in the fodder scam case.
“The CBI court of Shivapal Singh issued the notices asking why contempt should not be initiated against the four people for their statements issued after Lalu Prasad was convicted,” lawyer Arvind Singh told the media.
Besides Tejashwi Yadav, the notices were issued to former minister and senior Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, RJD spokesman Manoj Jha and Congress leader Manish Tiwary.
When Lalu Prasad was convicted in the fodder scam case on December 23, the RJD leaders had questioned the acquittal of former Bihar Chief Minister Jagganth Mishra.
They said Mishra was a Brahmin and so he was acquitted and Lalu Prasad was convicted as he belonged to backward class.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
(google photo)
By Sundeep Pouranik,
Bhopal : This past year was expected to be crucial for moving ahead with the corruption charges involving the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board (MPPEB), popularly known as Vyapam. The CBI did file two charge-sheets naming a staggering 1,082 accused — but it is yet to name the mastermind of the entire scam.
More importantly, the central investigative agency has given a clean chit to Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
It has now been four years since the matter came to light and the CBI has been proving it for the past two years. The scam involved 13 different exams conducted for selecting medical students and state government employees (including food inspectors, transport constables, police personnel, school teachers, dairy supply officers and forest guards) in which the final results were rigged.
“If the mastermind of the Vyapam corruption is not known, then how are the other accused going to be punished? On the contrary, the rest of the accused are also getting bailed out of jail due to the lethargic attitude of the CBI. The CBI charge-sheet is so irrelevant that nobody can be punished on its basis,” veteran lawyer Anand Mohan Mathur told IANS.
Holding that Vyapam is one of the biggest corruption cases in the country, Mathur said the CBI, which was mandated by the Supreme Court to probe the issue, was only going through the paces half-heartedly. He noted that when there is a corruption allegation in a bank, its manager is charged; but in this case, there are no charges against those occupying top positions.
The question that arises, he said, is how did Vyapam become so big a scam without a mastermind?
Dipak Gupta, a noted professor of Criminal Science at Sagar University, said that it is important for the mastermind to be revealed in any big organised crime.
“Charge-sheets have been filed against a thousand people — but they are only middlemen. They are the second step, the first step is getting hold of the mastermind. As long as he/she is not revealed, this case will go on in the same manner. The CBI should first make the name of the mastermind public,” Gupta told IANS.
In March this year, the Congress had accused the Chauhan-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the state of being a party to the corruption charges. Opposition leader Ajay Singh had claimed that several ministers of the Madhya Pradesh government were involved in it, expressing disappointment that no case was registered against them. To this, Chauhan retorted that he had ordered an investigation as soon as the matter was brought to his notice.
It is worth noting that only 1,378 cases involving appointments through Vyapam have come to fore while the total number of appointments is much greater.
Meanwhile, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) also raised objections on Vyapam in its report in March. The report had questioned the reliability of appointments made through Vyapam, specifically mentioning that the appointment of two officers, Dr Yogesh Uprit (2003, Congress government) and Pankaj Trivedi (2011, BJP government) were made on the orders of ministers. Both of these officers have been arrested on several charges. The CAG report further said that the state government never showed an interest in a free and fair audit of Vyapam.
The Vyapam scam was revealed on July 7, 2013, when the Indore crime branch busted a gang involved in facilitating the appearance of fake candidates in the Pre-Medical test (PMT).
The High Court took cognisance of the matter and appointed a Special Task Force (STF) to be monitored by the court’s Justice Chandresh Bhushan. On July 9, 2015, it was decided that the CBI should take over the case, which it did so six days later.
Lakshmikant Sharma, a former minister in the BJP government; his Officer-on-Special-Duty O.P. Shukla; BJP leader Sudhir Sharma; Dhananjay Yadav, the OSD of then Governor Ram Naresh Yadav (2011-16); and computer analyst Nitin Mohindra are among those behind bars even as the case doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere.
More than 2,000 accused have been arrested in the case and a little over 400 are still at large — as is the mastermind.
(Sundeep Pouranik can be contacted at sundeep.p@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : The CBI and the Enforcement Directorate on Thursday said they will appeal in the High Court against the special CBI court verdict acquitting all the accused in the 2G spectrum allocation case and said the court has “failed” to take note in “proper perspective” the prosecution’s evidence.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in a statement after special CBI judge O.P. Saini acquitted all the accused, including then Telecom Minister A. Raja and DMK MP Kanimozhi, said: “The CBI will be taking necessary legal remedies in the matter and is planning to move to High Court against the special court’s verdict in the 2G scam case dated December 21, 2017.
“The judgement has been prima facie examined and it appears that the evidence adduced to substantiate the charges by the prosecution has not been appreciated in its proper perspective by the learned court.”
The ED in a statement said, “We have decided to move in appeal against the judgement dated December 21 of the special court on a number of grounds based on the facts as well as legal provisions.”
“The court appears to have failed to appreciate a number of factors which, inter alia, position the offence of money laundering as stand alone offence.”
The ED, which is also probing financial irregularities in the case and assisting the CBI, raised question over the special court’s verdict ignoring the findings of Supreme Court that has been keeping a regular tab on the investigation till the chargesheet was not filed in the case.
“Besides the observation and findings of Supreme Court in this case appear to have not been considered by the special court.”
The ED statement said the offence of money laundering as defined under Section 3 is, inter alia, based on the term proceeds of crime which the court failed to appreciate.
The court also failed on the point in which the crime is defined under Section 2(1)(u) of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), which considers only the criminal activity instead of commission of an offence, it said.
It said that the acquittal by the court in PMLA prosecution by interpreting the term criminal activity to the extent of commission of an offence appeared to be “erroneous”.
“The court has appreciated the material evidence qua offence of money laundering at the time of framing of charges against the accused persons but the same material appears to have not been considered while deciding the prosecution complaint under PMLA. And, the accused persons have been acquitted from the offence of money laundering only on the
basis of no commission of offence and not the occurrence of criminal activity,” said the ED statement.
While announcing the judgment, the special judge O.P. Saini said the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate had failed to provide sufficient evidence to prove the charges against 33 persons named in the case that contributed to the Congress-led UPA’s electoral loss in 2014.
—IANS
