Natwar Gandhi has reigned unchallenged as D.C.’s top accountant for more than a decade, but federal corruption charges that his employees stole $16 million from his tax office threaten the self-described “bean counter’s” sterling reputation.

Federal authorities unsealed indictments Wednesday accusing veteran city employees of funneling money to themselves through a series of dummy companies, and for the first time in his career, Gandhi was forced to answer questions about integrity in his office.

“He’s professional and personally honest,” said District Council member Mary Cheh, D-Ward 3. “But, at the end of the day, if we have systems in place that would allow this to go on for years, at this magnitude, there’s a serious problem within.”

David Catania, independent at large and long D.C.’s only public critic of Gandhi, put the blame on the chief financial officer.

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“We need an accounting,” Catania said. “This is grand-scale larceny. How we can have no control over such a simple area is beyond me.”

Gandhi is the closest thing to a celebrity in the D.C. government and is celebrated in city hall, on Capitol Hill and on Wall Street for restoring professionalism to the city finance office.

Critics have complained, though, that Gandhi was always there to take credit when things went well but couldn’t be found when scandals erupted in the city agencies he was supposed to monitor. On Tuesday, a scandal struck home in the tax office where Gandhi started his D.C. career, and which he has always used to demonstrate his talents.

In an interview with The Examiner earlier this year, Gandhi repeated a tale he has often told about sorting out the chaotic finances in that office when he was first hired. “We moved the boxes [of neglected tax forms] off the floor,” he said.

Still, allegations of corruption didn’t surprise Todd Zirkle, a former tax office employee whom Gandhi fired in 2001 after Zirkle accused his co-workers of giving preferential treatment to a politically connected law firm.

“It was always a fire drill over there. Every three or four weeks they’d have a crisis,” Zirkle recalled. “They always had people like Harriette [Walters] with their fingers in the pot because there were no controls.”

Gandhi was often warned that financial controls had to be tightened, but he was too busy “breaking his arm patting himself on the back,” Zirkle said.

It’s unclear what effect, if any, the scandal will have on the city’s bond rating. Gandhi has boasted about raising the city’s profile on Wall Street to “A-plus,” a middling rating but much better than the “B” he inherited.

Gandhi worked hard to cauterize the wound Wednesday, saying at a briefing with seven D.C. Council members and later, at a public news conference, that the alleged corruption was “immaterial” to the city’s financial prospects.

Cheh, among others, was skeptical.

“This certainly raises questions about whether this shop is being well superintended,” she said. “And we’re going to have to ferret that out.”

Got a tip on the finance office? Call Bill Myers at 202-459-4956 or e-mail bmyers@dcexaminer.com.