Fraud in lotteries department hushed up

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Though the government announced a string of measures to plug loopholes to prevent swindling money by public servants in the wake of treasury scam, another financial fraud uncovered two years ago has not yet seen the light of day.
A financial inspection wing (FIW) probe into alleged irregularities in lotteries department had found that several officials connived to swindle money under the cover of transporting printed lottery tickets to various parts of the state. Interestingly, the FIW report two years ago, with six recommendations against the culprits (a copy of which has been accessed by TOI), has not been processed for unknown reasons.
FIW found that Rs 41.9 lakh was swindled by some lottery department officials by forging documents showing it as travel expenditure for 232 non-existent trips for distributing lotteries, printed at Centre for Advanced Printing & Training (C-APT) in the capital, to various centres across the state. The report named 24 officials ranging from deputy director, junior superintendent, upper division clerk and district lotteries officer, who served in the department from 2013 to 2017, as responsible for the fraud.
The probe found several malpractices including in awarding contract for lottery distribution. The contract was awarded to the same person for many years, even when ownership of vehicles used for the purpose were not in the person’s name to whom the contract was awarded, in violation of rules. In one instance, the vehicle’s registration number in records used for transporting lotteries, was registered at a much later date than it was used for the purpose. This would mean that such a vehicle was non-existent during the time it was shown as distributing lotteries, the report found. The probe also found that the same vehicle was recorded to be at two different locations at the same time, clearly showing that the documents were forged.
The inspection team made six recommendations to the government. It recommended stringent action against errant officials while also recovering money from them.
However, FIW’s report (with file number 1763/FIW-h2/2017/Fin) was never forwarded to higher authorities, as it is learnt that there was pressure from some quarters to exclude some names from the list of those responsible for the fraud.