CBI lodges FIR in fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 92 lakh from GPF accounts of MEA

The CBI has registered a case against unidentified officials of the External Affairs Ministry for irregular withdrawal of Rs 92 lakh from GPF accounts of the ministry between August 2017 and February 2018, officials said today.

It was found in the internal review of accounts by the External Affairs Ministry that the amount was fraudulently transferred from four GPF accounts, they said.

The fraud was detected when an attempt was made to withdraw Rs 22 lakh from the GPF account of a person named Ram Kumar on June 7 in Axis Bank branch in Janakpuri, they said.

"Due to mismatch of name with GPF account holder etc, the payment of the bill was stopped through bank. During the internal review, it is revealed that COMPACT Data Base (software in which office of Principal Chief Controller of Accounts operates ministry's accounts) had been tampered with and certain data fields altered in order to facilitate the fraudulent withdrawal," the MEA had said in its complaint.

It was also observed that signatures of the sanctioning authorities concerned were forged and wrong file numbers and details were made on the fraudulent GPF withdrawal documents, it said.

The ministry said enquiry from the bank concerned has revealed that the accounts through which the fraudulent amount has been withdrawn, belong to some other individual and not the GPF beneficiary.

It is also suspected that such fraudulent withdrawals have been made from some other accounts also, it said in the complaint which is now part of the FIR.

Based on allegations, the CBI has registered a case of criminal conspiracy, forgery and cheating against unidentified officials of the ministry.