The Central Bureau of Investigation has booked eight Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation officials for allegedly draining more than Rs 18.97 crore from its corpus through false claims by creating fake members’ accounts related to closed or inactive establishments.
The CBI has booked them under various sections of the IPC and the Prevention of Corruption Act for cheating, forgery and criminal misconduct. All the eight EPFO officials named in the CBI FIR have been removed from office for their alleged involvement in the fraud.
In its complaint to the CBI, the EPFO said, “The modus operandi of the fraudsters was to create bogus PF accounts, show credits between approximately Rs 2 lakh to Rs 4 lakh against each account and draw the amount from these accounts by filing fake claims. Factoring the loss in investment, the wrongful loss to the corpus at the hands of the fraudsters is compounded many times over and above the principal sum of Rs 18.97 crore.”
According to the EPFO, it detected 833 cases of fraudulent settlements between 2019 to 2021 through 20 dormant establishments in Mumbai. The accused officials, Chandan Kumar Sinha, Abhijeet Onekar, Shiva Shankar Mamadi, Uttam Tagaray, Vijay J. Jarpe, Dilip Rathod, Ganesh Ghaywat and Seema Benkar, were posted at the EPFO’s Mumbai office.
The EPFO also said that these fake claims were settled to members with bank accounts across the country and the fraud has “pan-India ramifications warranting a detailed investigation and appropriate legal action by the CBI”.
