Electronic Clearing System of the Income Tax Department hacked: Hacker Diverted around Rs 15 crore; CBI asked to investigate
- Friday, January 22, 2010, 9:16
- Income Tax
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The Electronic Clearing System (ECS) of the Income Tax (I-T) Department has been hacked into, jeopardising the functioning of department across Mumbai. On Wednesday, three days after the incident, the I-T department handed over the investigation to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
Sources revealed that the ECS of the I-T department, which facilitates tax refunds of Mumbaikars has been hacked into. It is believed, the hacker also managed to divert crores of rupees from the system. Following this incident, the entire system that processes income tax payment has been shut down since Monday. To prevent further damage, the department has now changed the passwords of all the senior officers with access to the ECS.
Chief Commissioner of Income Tax, R K Singh confirmed the report, stating, “The matter has been transferred to Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).”
According to I-T sources, the incident came to light last week when an additional commissioner level officer discovered unauthorised remittance made from his section. The officer informed his seniors about it and investigations revealed the ECS had been hacked into.
“Prima facie it seems that more than Rs 15 crore has been siphoned off from the ECS. Investigations are on to ascertain the total amount,” an officer from the I-T Department said requesting anonymity.
ECS system of the I-T was launched recently to clear the refunds of taxpayers in bulk and cut down the tedious paperwork. Sources said that the department has cleared the refunds of one lakh more assessees in a short span of a month through ECS.
“The remittance was made by computers. Now, to check the source and officer who has cleared the refunds, one has to manually go through the entire process which will take a really long time,” said an assessing officer from the I-T department.
In a parallel inquiry, the investigation wing of the I-T is also on a trail of bogus PAN cardholders. Sources said a businessman from suburban Mumbai had filed an income tax return with the help of bogus PAN card. The I-T official got suspicious and found that the card was made in the name of two boys. I-T officials interrogated the boys who revealed that they never applied for any PAN card.
Further inquiries revealed that their father’s employers had managed the fake PAN cards in the name of boys. The I-T officials then approached the local police, but police refused to register the offence. Inquiries are still on in the matter.
I-T payment system has been shut down since Monday following the incident
The credit for this great robbery must go to the CBDT, the authorities who had decided to go for the particular company providing the technical service for the ECS facility and, of course, the NSDL with whom the entire job of issuing refunds for the entire country is centralised at Mumbai.This is nothing new and scores of many other such refund fraud cases are pending in several courts/with CBI for decades. Like the famous Madras Race Club Refund racket, the perpetrators of which were never apprehended while they became owners of assets worth billions. All this cannot happen without the connivance and active cooperation of the top IT officers, bank officials including managers, the insiders in the Service Providers’ organisation and, of course, the PRACTITIONERS who, in fact, are nothing but the agents of the officers of the IT Department. If CBI intends to do a real job in this case, it must bring to books first the culprits who had for decades looted the tax payers’ monies. In fact, they have become welthy and respectable people at the cost of and by looting the taxes paid in good faith by ordinary tax payers in whose cases the officers are too eager to recover the so-called outstanding taxes by attaching bank accounts, house properties, apart from harassing them in many other ways with impunity. Let the Secretary Revenue to the Government now clarify this.
And, after all this, they are coming up with a DTC minus a CBDT comprising of IRS officers, instead of doing away with the IRS as a whole. What a mockery!