Ministry of External Affairs officials booked by CBI

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed an First Investigation Report (FIR) against the officials of the Ministry of External Affairs for a fraud of over 92 lakhs.  The case has been registered by CBI after a complaint from the Controller of Accounts, Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi.

It was observed by the office of Principal Chief Controller Accounts that 92 lakhs has been fraudulently withdrawn from various General Provident Funds (GPF) accounts of the Ministry during the period August 2017 to February 2018.

A person named Ram Kumar made an attempt  of withdrawing Rs 22 lakhs from a GPF account from Axis Bank in Janakpuri on 7 June and hence the fraud was detected.

“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.

The complaint also stated that signatures of the sanctioning authorities concerned were forged and wrong file numbers and details were made on the fraudulent GPF withdrawal documents.

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the enquiry from the bank it has been revealed that the bank accounts, through which the fraudulent amount has been withdrawn, belong to some other individual and not the GPF beneficiary.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

The CBI has booked unnamed public servants of MEA and other under sections of 120 (b) (criminal conspiracy), 420 (forgery), 467, 468, 471 of Indian Penal Code and under section 13 (2) of PC Act.