By IANS,
Mumbai : The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Tuesday conducted searches at the residences and offices of five Central Excise and Customs officials of Nagpur, an official said.
Searches were carried out in Nagpur, Mumbai and Indore apart from the offices of four companies and incriminating documents relating to fraudulent acts have been seized, a CBI spokesman said Tuesday.
The accused officials included the then assistant commissioners N.P. Meshram, P. George Verghese and D.S. Patil and the then additional superintendents J.S. Solanki and B.K. Adle, according to the spokesman.
They allegedly “closed the service tax returns files of Facor Steel, Lloyds Steel Industries, Bajaj Steel Industries and Sunflag Steel Industries knowing that it involved suppression of facts by the companies and had to be assessed under section 73(4) of the Central Excise Act”, he added.
It is also alleged that they closed the files when they were not the competent authorities to take the final decision.
“The loss caused to the government on account of this fraudulent closing of the files is about Rs.1.10 crore. This service tax pertained to the payments made by the companies to the agents outside India,” the spokesperson said.