New Delhi, Feb 2 The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday said it has recovered cash of Rs 13.40 lakh during searches in connection with a case related to allegations of fraudulent settlement of EPF claims into bogus accounts.
Searches were conducted at four places in Mumbai which also led to recovery of incriminating documents.
The accused EPFO official allegedly committed a fraud of over Rs 18 crore by diverting the PF into bogus accounts.
A senior CBI official said that a case was registered on complaint from EPFO, Head Office, New Delhi against 10 persons including officials of EPFO.
"Former Senior Social Security Assistant, then Social Security Assistant (SSA), Data Processing Assistant, three Assistant Provident Fund Commissioners, Accounts Officer, Section Supervisor, who were working with EPFO, Regional Office, Kandivali-East, Mumbai were named as accused in the case," said a senior CBI official.
A cash of Rs 10 lakh was recovered from the premises of then Section Supervisor and Rs 3.40 lakh from the premises of then Social Security Assistant.
It was alleged that officials of EPFO entered a conspiracy with each other and in furtherance of the conspiracy, they had settled fraudulent claims in 712 bogus PF accounts and caused loss to the tune of Rs 18,97,43,150 to the EPF corpus maintained by EPFO.
It was also alleged that the accused adopted a unique modus operandi and created bogus PF accounts in the name of certain persons of closed companies, showed credits of Rs 2 lakh to Rs 4 lakh against each account and withdrew the amounts from these accounts by filing fake claims.
It was also alleged that the claims were found to be settled to the members with bank accounts in different parts of country.
After receiving the complaint, the CBI filed an FIR and formed a team of its elite official to look into the case.
The CBI officials recorded the statements of the victim and after deciding the case with senior officials, it conducted raids at the office and different premises of the accused
Further investigation into the matter is underway.
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