4 contractors sentenced in MCD's Rs 70 lakh bitumen scam

Four private contractors have been sentenced to two years in jail by a court here for using forged bills to show they purchased bitumen worth over Rs 70 lakh for carpeting Delhi roads and obtaining payment for the same from the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD).
Special CBI Judge Kanwaljeet Arora handed down the jail term to convicts Anur Kumar Jain of M/s R K Goel, Kartar Singh Shokeen of M/s Vijay & Company, Ziley Singh of M/s Ziley Singh Tanwar & Company and Radhey Shayam M/s Radhey Shyam & Company for the loss of over Rs 70 lakh caused to MCD.

All the four, who were proprietors of their companies, were held guilty of cheating the civic body by submitting "forged invoices as genuine to show the procurement of bitumen from approved oil refineries, for claiming payment from MCD".
"MCD for dense carpeting of roads had awarded a contract to the convicts, herein with the expectations to perform the work as per the standard specifications. Convicts instead of rising upto the expected standards, had thought for their own benefit to the detriment of public at large in general and MCD in particular, by compromising with quality of work.
"They cheated MCD by submitting forged invoices as genuine to show the procurement of bitumen from approved oil refineries, for claiming payment from MCD," the court said.

Besides the jail term, the court has also imposed a fine of Rs 20 lakh on Jain, Rs two lakh on Shokeen, Rs two lakh on Singh and Rs five lakh on Shayam.
According to the complaint filed in 1999, CBI found that the MCD officials in 1998 had allegedly made payments to several private contractors on the basis of fake invoices of oil companies.
The complainant, then MCD Additional Deputy Commissioner (Engineering) S K Jain, alleged these fake invoices certified that the supply of bitumen was actually received in their presence by the contractors, whereas in fact the consignments were never received.