VISAKHAPATNAM: The Treasury Department has unearthed another Rs 50-lakh ‘Pension arrears scam’. The scamster was a junior accountant of Seethammadhara divisional Sub Treasury Office (STO). Department higher officials have ordered an inquiry. The authorities are suspecting that the accused junior accountant had done the illegal pension arrear amount credits by hacking the pension portal for user IDs and the passwords.
In this connection, the assistant treasury officer (ATO), divisional sub-treasury, Vizag, requested the Gopalapatnam SBI branch to submit an accounts copy of the amount credited to pensioners’ account. After thoroughly checking, the ATO found that around Rs 50.35 lakh was withdrawn and only Rs 31,820 is available in the pensioners’ account as on October 16, 2018.
According to sources, the new scam surfaced on Tuesday when a senior accountant from Yellamanchili, Ramakrishna, one of the 12 inspecting team members, identified a suspicious recovery amount entry of a family pension beneficiary account (by verifying the pension payment order ID). On further verification of the entire data, he found that a suspicious credit of Rs 16,00,580 additional payment, stated as arrears posting, along with regular pension in May 2018, payable on June 1 and another Rs 34,65,800 as arrears payment posting in August, payable on September 1, totalling Rs 50,66,380 and irregularly credited to Gopalapatnam branch of State Bank of India account.
On further investigation, it was found that the total additional amount transferred to the account belongs to a family pension beneficiary and also the mother of the junior accountant Y Venkata Narasinga Rao at the divisional STO. Further, the officials identified that around Rs 1 lakh was transferred to the saving bank account of the junior accountant and the SBI officials also confirmed the same through the account statement of the above pensioner’s account.
IN A NUTSHELL
J8-crore pension scam broke in 2012 and further identified that a large number of PPOs were missing from the office into which huge amounts were credited into pensioners’ accounts and the amounts were later withdrawn by the culprits. Accused persons even operated accounts of the dead pensioners
Basing on the previous inquiry report, government suspended two ATOs, two STOs and two senior accountants. Later the Vigilance took over and two months back it submitted the report to government