The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered a case against K. Satyanarayana Rao, a retired section supervisor in the Kadapa Sub-Regional Office of the Employment Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), and five of his family members for alleged fraudulent diversion of ₹1.64 crore belonging to the pensioners into their personal bank accounts.
Assistant Regional Provident Fund Commissioner of the EPFO, Kadapa, Shashank Jaiswal, lodged a complaint with V. Chandrasekhar, Deputy Inspector-General of CBI, Hyderabad, on February 21, after the diversion was detected in a special audit by officials and also a committee constituted to look into details of fraudulent transactions in fraudulent pension cases in the Sub-Regional Office.
Basing on the complaint, a case was registered by CBI Deputy Superintendent of Police M. Krishna Mohan on February 23 against Mr. Satyanarayana Rao, his son K. Sai Kiran, family member K. Satya Krishna, and close relatives K. Subramanyam, K. Padmavathi, and K. Satyavathi, all residents of Nellore. They were booked under Sections 409, 420, 468, 471, and 477 A read with 120 B of the IPC and Sections 13 (2) read with Section 13 (1)(d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.
The complaint
The Assistant Regional PF Commissioner said in his complaint that huge quantum of funds had been credited into the accounts of the accused between 2011 and 2014. A sum of ₹39,90,808 had been fraudulently diverted and credited into 11 accounts in about 40 transactions maintained in various branches of Andhra Bank in Kadapa and Nellore, in the names of the accounts of the six accused, he added.
Further, a sum of ₹1,24,65,720 had been fraudulently diverted and credited into 16 bank accounts in about 76 transactions maintained by the accused in various branches of the State Bank of India in Kadapa and Nellore, Mr. Jaiswal said in his complaint. Also, ₹3,944 had been diverted and credited into the account of Sai Kiran in the Andhra Pragathi Grameena Bank, Kadapa.
“The complaint discloses commission of offence of criminal conspiracy, criminal misconduct by a public servant, criminal breach of trust by public servant, or by banker, merchant or agent, cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property, forgery for purpose of cheating, using as genuine a forged document or electronic record, and falsification of accounts, and prime facie reveals commission of cognizable offence,” said the FIR.
The modus operandi adopted was the Bank Reconciliation Statement data in soft copy was tampered with by inserting fraudulent bank account numbers and fictitious names against randomly selected Pension Payment Order numbers from the pensioners’ data and those who had no pension for over three years due to non-submission of life certificate and cases involving pension-cum-arrears and other benefits.
The BRS data was downloaded through system protocol available in the Electronic Data Processing reports and copied in a CD and handed over to the banks without any hard copy of the summary report showing the number of pensioners and amount of pension to be disbursed, making it vulnerable to manipulation, Mr. Shashank Jaiswal said in his complaint.
The data was uploaded by the bankers without any cross verification, he added.
