Details about this story

• Source: Washington Post
• Date: November 20, 2007
• URL: Read the story
• Bylines: Dan Keating , Carol D. Leonnig
• Topics: Local Government , Tax
• Data Types: Local Data
• Description/Excerpt: In the last year that Natwar M. Gandhi ran the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue, the agency issued 15 property tax refund checks worth $2.46 million without required court orders and sometimes to companies that did not exist, a Washington Post analysis has found. The suspicious checks included a $223,000 refund in mid-2000 to a fictitious business listed as Ninja Jo Associates. Accountants at Nina Jo Associates -- an actual partnership that owns a commercial high-rise on K Street -- said yesterday that they never received such a check. The business's name appears to have been slightly altered in city records to cover up a fabricated tax refund, The Post analysis showed. Similar alterations were uncovered in five additional checks issued to companies that didn't exist. The analysis covered refund checks issued from October 1999, the oldest records available, through June 2000, when Gandhi was promoted from director of the tax office to the city's chief financial officer. The amounts of the suspicious checks ranged from $50,000 to more than $350,000.