The Economic Offences Wing has divided the investigation into the e-tendering scam in six parts, so as to clearly indentify the accused of the scam. The multi crore and multi level e-tendering scam came in light in 2018, following which the then government forwarded the investigation to the EOW for better investigations.
The investigation agency have focused the investigation including the people involved in the preparation of software, role of government officials, the beneficiary companies, the middlemen, the software and hardware handling companies and the people who are connected with the e-tendering and procurement- the politicians. The MP state electronics development corporation had formed the platform and the website to conduct the tendering process.
The IT solution company Osmo was involved in preparing the digital signature and the demo of the tender. Another IT firm- Antrance is involved in proving the server services for the cause. Both the companies have already been raided and investigation is under process. The police had arrested the OSD Nand Kumar Bharmhe. The EOW is making a list of officials who had the digital signature key and are involved in tampering.
The next target of the investigative agencies is the companies which benefitted from the tampering, their officials and staff.
The important loop of the scam is the middlemen, who had helped the companies to obtain the tenders and who had contacted the officers and software companies to tamper the tenders.
The police are preparing a list such people, but they are invisible, the police have to take the help of the bank accounts and phone numbers to establish the money trail of the scam. The officials and staff of the software and hardware companies which were involved in tampering are also under scanner. These companies were having the full access to manipulate the software and the hardware for tempering.
Last but not the least the politicians or the ministers, who had signed the note sheet, orders, memorandum ignoring the provisions of the tendersare also under scanner. It has also come to fore that some of the companies had filed the complaints to the department heads and also the ministers that the tender documents had been tampered. But the officials and the ministers ignored all such complaints and are now under the scanner of the EOW.
DG speaks
EOW DG- KN Tiwari told Free Press the team which had gone to Bengaluru will return shortly. The team had seized various data, had taken the forensic images of servers and many other documents from the Antrance Company. The agency have categorised the scam and they are working to crack it, he added.