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MEA employees lose Rs 92 lakh of provident fund money to online fraud, CBI begins probe

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The fraud was discovered after an internal review by accounts officials found the software with which ministry’s accounts were operated was hacked.

New Delhi: Several employees of the ministry of external affairs have lost their provident fund money to an online fraud that came to light last month.

According to the CBI, which has filed an FIR in this connection, a total of Rs 92 lakh was fraudulently withdrawn from employees’ General Provident Fund (GPF) accounts between August 2017 and February 2018.

GPF is a form of life savings in which employees contribute a part of their salary into their accounts in regular instalments for a certain period of time. The employees get the entire money back after retirement.

CBI suspects that more such fraudulent withdrawals have been made from other accounts as well.

“We have registered a case and have begun the investigation. It is a serious matter as it pertains to life savings of these government officials and hacking of a government database,” an officer said.

The fraud came to light after an internal review by the office of Principal Chief Controller of Accounts found that the COMPACT Data Base — software with which ministry’s accounts were operated — had been tampered with and certain data fields were altered in order to facilitate the withdrawals.

Following this, Shailandra Kumar, controller of accounts, MEA, wrote to the CBI and an FIR was filed against unidentified public servants of the ministry for criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery of valuable security, forgery for the purpose of cheating and using a forged document as genuine and 66 of the IT Act.

The fraud

According to the FIR, a total of four withdrawals were made from GPF accounts of MEA officials.

The first withdrawal of Rs 25 lakh was made from MEA employee Ankit Sharma’s GPF account with the Central Bank of India, Safdarjung Develoment Area, on 23 August 2017. Sharma, however, denied withdrawing that amount.

In the second fraudulent transaction, Anuj Singh Tokas lost Rs 25 lakh of his GPF money on 5 September, 2017. In this case, the money was deposited in Canara Bank’s Bareilly branch, where the beneficiary was recorded to be Rashid Ali.

Another Rs 22 Lakh was withdrawn from the account of Raj Kumar Ganger on 23 October, 2017, from Axis Bank in New Delhi and the beneficiary was shown as Niranjan Singh.

The fourth withdrawal of Rs 20 lakh was made from V.D. Mahto’s GPF account in UBI bank, Guwahati on 2 February, 2018. Here the beneficiary was shown as Sagar Saikia.

Detecting the fraud

The fraud was discovered when a fifth withdrawal of Rs 22 Lakh was initiated from the account of Ram Kumar from Axis Bank in Janakpuri, New Delhi, on 21 May, 2017, following which an inquiry was made.

“This transaction was stopped by the bank, due to mismatch of the name with the GPF account holder,” the FIR says.

The internal review also found that the COMPACT data base was tampered with.

“It is observed that signatures of the sanctioning authorities were forged and wrong file numbers and details were made on the fraudulent GPF withdrawal documents,” the FIR reads.

When the MEA made an enquiry about the transactions from the banks, it was found that the beneficiaries were not the account holders.

“Enquiry from the bank concerned has revealed that the accounts, from which the amount has been fraudulently withdrawn, belong to some other individual and not the GPF beneficiary,” the FIR says.

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