ROURKELA: As part of its investigation into the forgery of over Rs 56.89 crore by officials of PEC Ltd, Delhi and directors of a private industry in Sundargarh district, the CBI conducted searches at 11 places across the country on Friday, October 1, 2021.
In a statement, the premier investigation agency said a case was registered against the former chairman-cum-managing director (CMD) of PEC Ltd AK Mirchandani and seven other former officials besides three directors of Maa Tarini Industries Ltd (MTIL) based at Balanda near Rourkela in Sundargarh.
It was alleged that the accused had entered into a conspiracy to defraud public money to the tune of Rs 56,89,52,416 on the pretext of PEC financing domestic procurement of iron ore and coal to MTIL. The fraud amount was calculated as principal and interest as of June 20, 2021.
Accordingly, searches were conducted at 11 places which included offices and residences in New Delhi, Thane (Maharashtra), Guwahati (Assam) and Ghaziabad (UP) leading to the recovery of incriminating documents and articles.
MTIL directors Piyush Sengar, Bhupendra Das and Mayank Dhar, all residing at Rourkela, have been made accused in the case. AK Mirchandani along with Rajiv Chaturvedi, DK Gupta, PK Bhatia, C Rishi, Rohit Verma, GY Dupata and Saurabh Rai, all former PEC officials from the rank of chief general manager and below, are the other accused.
The PEC is a government of India enterprise under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Its website states that it stopped business since September, 2019.