VISAKHAPATNAM: Barely three months after Seethammadhara Sub-Treasury Office made the headlines for swindling of money to the tune of `3 crore by its officials from 12 accounts of pensioners, more skeletons have tumbled out of the closet. The intelligence and enforcement authorities have blown the lid off another scam worth around `1 crore in which money was withdrawn in the names of eight benami pensioners. This time, pension money was swindled by fraudsters from 20 pensioners’ accounts. However, the treasury officials remain tight-lipped on the issue.
After the scam came to light in October last year, the vigilance officials conducted a search at the treasury office., apart from an internal audit. The Treasury Department then suspended six employees, including one assistant director, two sub-treasury officers and three senior accountants for their alleged involvement in the unauthorised withdrawal of amounts at Seethammadhara sub-treasury office.
The government also then ordered a vigilance probe under the leadership of DSP CM Naidu.
After the initial inquiry at Seethammadhara and Anakapalle STOs, the probe team decided to focus on Seethammadhara office as around 16,000 pensioners of the total 40,000 beneficiaries in the district have their accounts here. Even, the probe team made a complaint to the government that the treasury staffers were not cooperating with them.
Then the government asked the State Audit Department (SAD) officials to look into the matter. Since December 2017, the vigilance and SAD senior accountants have been verifying all the records and searching for the 800 pension payment orders (PPOs) that were reportedly missing from the records.
According to sources, the probe teams have completed the inspection of 3,000 account records of the total 16,000 at Seethammadhara office.
Meanwhile, the audit team has identified a fresh scam worth around `1 crore which has been withdrawn from the pension accounts of eight dead pensioners. Sources said that though the beneficiaries died three years ago, the fraudsters submitted false life certificates and kept withdrawing money from the accounts.
Crime chart
`3 crore swindled by officials from 12 accounts of pensioners and the case came to light in Oct last year
The officials submitted fake life certificates in the names of beneficiaries and withdrew money
After an internal audit, six officials were suspended