BHUBANESWAR: Vigilance on Sunday arrested a former senior assistant of the sub-treasury office at Chandbali along with his five associates for their alleged involvement in an Rs 8 crore financial fraud.
The accused was identified as Santosh Kumar Panda. Vigilance officials said Panda masterminded a prolonged criminal conspiracy that resulted in misappropriation of such a huge sum of money from the state exchequer between 2018 and 2023.
Investigation revealed a sophisticated manipulation of the Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS), exploiting the trust-based digital workflow between clerks and authorising officers.
Elaborating on the modus operandi, officials of the anti-corruption agency said a genuine pension, gratuity or commutation of value of pension (CVP) bill was being processed and paid to a real pensioner. Panda waited for five to six months after the genuine transaction was completed to avoid immediate detection.
“Then, using his official login ID and password, Panda accessed the ‘gratuity payment menu’ on the IFMS portal. He re-entered the original pension payment order (PPO) number and ID of the genuine pensioner. But, instead of the pensioner’s account, he generated a third-party government pension order ID, diverting the funds to his associates,” Vigilance officials said.
Further probe revealed that the sub-treasury officer, the approving authority, allegedly approved these bills using a separate login without verifying if the bill had already been paid or if the beneficiary details matched with the original authority. “By using this method, Panda and his associates, diverted Rs 8,04,76,146 between July 25, 2018 to May 4, 2023,” they said.
The officials said funds from 102 individual fraudulent bills were funnelled into 44 different bank accounts belonging to 37 private individuals, who were associates of Panda. A case has been registered in this connection and further investigation is underway,” they added.
