M A I N   N E W S

CBI seeks details of assets

NEW DELHI, Nov 5 (PTI) — The CBI has asked the Income Tax authorities to provide details of the assets of two cricketers — Mohammed Azharuddin and Ajay Sharma — against whom the agency has not ruled out the possibility of prosecution under the Prevention of Corruption Act as they were “public servants”.

Agency sources said the CBI had written a letter to Income Tax Department asking them to provide details of the assets of these two players.

The sleuths of the Special Crime Branch were also working on other leads available with them, the sources said.

Special Director G. Achari, who was overall in charge of the investigations into the match-fixing scandal, had said earlier “we will pursue the case against the two players under the Prevention of Corruption Act and we will not allow the matter to rest.”

“We are gathering more evidence against these two players and are waiting for more inputs from Income Tax authorities,” he had said adding that “at some stage we may call them for further questioning, though not for the time being.”

Azhar is Chief Manager and pro with the State Bank of India and Sharma is employed with the Central Warehousing Corporation.

The sources said though the prosecution of the two was not ruled out, the course of action would depend on further evidence the agency was able to gather.

Income Tax sources said the CBI should not “hurry” in filing the FIR against any of the cricketers till the it department completed its assessment.

This will help the CBI in strengthening the case against the players, the it sources said adding that any hurry would level the case with that of hawala case which fizzled out.

The CBI had referred its probe report to former Supreme Court Judge Justice M.K. Mukherjee and Solicitor General Harish Salve to get their expert legal opinion on “whether the facts disclosed in the inquiry are sufficient to institute a case for any criminal offence”.

Though Justice Mukherjee ruled out a case of cheating against the players, on Azharuddin and Sharma, he said “The two players may be said to have committed offences under Section 13 (1) (D) (I) of the Prevention of Corruption Act”.

Salve also felt there was no point in proceeding against the players due to “improbability of investigating agency being able to obtain sufficient legal evidence.”

Meanwhile, having discovered a “huge undisclosed income” with some cricketers and bookies, the Income Tax Department has decided to proceed against them.

Senior it officials said they had also found some “new leads” against a bookie who had emerged as a key player in the match-fixing case.

Even as a debate was on about whether the players and others named by the CBI in its report could be prosecuted, highly placed it sources said the department would go ahead in the cases of undisclosed and unaccounted income detected during a nation-wide raid on July 20.

The sources said the department had almost finalised the “appraisal report” about the raids conducted at the premises of several top cricketers, administrators and bookies.

While a major portion of the appraisal report would be finalised by the end of this month, some may spill over to the next month, the sources said.

The “appraisal report” would be sent to assessment circles for officers to send show-cause notices to the players concered for paying up taxes due against their names, the sources said adding that undisclosed and unexplained income would be termed as deemed income “automatically reopening” the cases for a block year of 1991/2001.

“We have achieved reasonable success in the probe into cricketers and bookies who have huge concealed incomes from various sources,” the sources said.

While detection of undisclosed and unexplained income would invite 60 per cent penalty without any interest or prosecution, subsequent detection of undisclosed and unexplained income would attract a hefty penalty for the defaulters, the sources said adding that the “IT laws are very severe”.

The department has found some “new leads” over and above the CBI findings against the financial dealings of a bookie who had emerged as a key player in the match-fixing case, the sources said without elaborating.

They said the department would investigate afresh these leads and confront him with the evidence gathered.