ASI clerk held for laundering money by fudging bills

NEW DELHI: The Economic Offences Wing arrested a supervising clerk of the Archaeological Survey of India after it was found that he had been generating bills for fictitious payments using a bank account that he had opened in the name of a lower divisional clerk. The clerk was questioned during which it was found that he was on leave when some of the transactions took place.

The probe revealed that some of the official payments were even done through RTGS transactions, which is unusual for a government organisation. While scanning the bills, cops came across the superintendent’s role and arrested him. Probe revealed that using this modus operandi they had cheated the government exchequer of about Rs 9.5 crore since 2010. It was found that the scam did not come to fore earlier since audit of the office had not been done in the past 10 years.

The accused, Prem Prakash, along with his associate Basant Lal, used to print fake salary, TA and DA bills of vendors who supplied chemicals and other articles to the science department.

Addition commissioner of police (EOW) Suvashish Chowdhary said that the department had received a complaint from the deputy superintendent of the chemical department wherein he alleged that an internal inquiry found Prakash and Lal’s roles suspicious since they were handling the finances of the department. It was found that Prakash used to prepare forged bills in the name of the office, send it directly to the public accounts office (PAO).