MP: FIR registered against 170 in connection with embezzlement of Rs 162 cr in various dept
BHOPAL: The newly constituted State Financial Intelligence Cell (SFIC) of the Treasury and Accounts Directorate of the Madhya Pradesh government has detected embezzlement of around Rs 162 crore during the last five years in various departments.
In this connection, 170 suspicions have been booked across the state and recovered 15.48 crore transactions from them. A departmental inquiry has also been installed against the accountable officials and employees.
“The misconduct came to light first from the Seoni district where after inquiring about a complaint the finance department found that some subordinate employees of a drawing and disbursing officer (DDO) had withdrawn the amount in their own or their family accounts”, the Commissioner of Treasury and Accounts, Dnyaneshwar B Patil told Millennium Post. “The inquiry team found that the DDO has provided a login password to his clerk who also used to work as a bill creator and approver”, Patil said.
After this, SFIC was constituted to inquire about fake transactions by making data analysis of all offices of the DDOs across the state to detect those accounts in which amounts have been transferred in the last five years, Patil further said. After analysing 15 crore transactions made against the 85 Lakh bills by the SFIC, embezzlement of Rs 162,44,11,712 has been detected in 43 DDO offices so far, Finance Department sources said. Around Rs 15,48,18,626 have been recovered, FIRs have been registered against 170 officials and employees and a departmental inquiry has been installed against many officers, the sources also said.
Mostly embezzlement has been done by the clerks of DDOs who got the password from their officers, they have transferred money into their accounts or their family members. Around 5,600 DDOs pay various bills for their offices through the IFMIS (Integrated Financial Management and Information System) software run by the Department of Finance at the state level, including payments of salaries of more than 10 Lakh employees of the state and their allowances, office expenditures, grants, scholarships etc.
The SFIC has detected the first speculation of Rs 9.2 crore in the collector office in Indore. In the Central Jail Bherugarh, Ujjain, around Rs 20 crore in fraud transactions have been found, the amount has been transferred from the provident fund of employees to the accounts of three sentinels of the jail namely Ripudaman Singh, Shailendra Singh and Sonu Malviya.
Major embezzlement of Rs 81,27,76,308 has been found in the office of the Executive Engineer of Public Health Engineering Department Division-1 in Gwalior.
An official of the department said that in these cases, the negligence of the DDOs in sharing passwords with their clerks and not monitoring the payments has been found and to prevent this practice, e-sign has been made mandatory for approving the bills. An Aadhar-based payment system has been introduced to ensure the identification of the actual payees, he said.
