Commonwealth Games overlays suppliers — questioned by Income Tax investigation in connection with irregularities in Games contracts — have alleged that an average 15% commission was paid to Organising Committee officials, besides payoffs to project engineers and supervisors belonging to state and central civic agencies.
The allegations of corruption, that form part of the interrogation report of the I-T department, along with payoff details of at least 14 officials of Delhi government and civic agencies, have been forwarded to CBI.
A senior official said scrutiny of documents seized during the second round of I-T raids conducted on October 28 revealed that payoffs were made by Games contractors to at least 14 officials from the Delhi government, MCD, NDMC and DDA.
The contracts involved supply of sports accessories and laying of synthetic track surfaces, street lighting, streetscaping and beautification and other infrastructure projects.
Already, the Central Vigilance Commission and CBI have made preliminary inquiries that show escalation of costs to the extent of more than 30% in some cases and upto 75% in others. The I-T report, according to sources, indicates prices had been jacked up by at least 60% with contractors keeping a margin of 40% and rest distributed as payoff.
Sources said the seized documents revealed that some of the payments were made on monthly basis while in several cases, as the projects reached completion and payments were released, the payoffs turned weekly.
About 50 premises were raided in the nationwide coordinated I-T search operation in October last week that covered four major contractors — Shiv Naresh Sports, Sweka Powertech Engineers and Satya Prakash Brothers (all from Delhi) and MBL Infrastructure from Kolkata. The action was spread over Delhi NCR, Kolkata, Bangalore, Jamshedpur and Mumbai.
