With ₹1.64 Crore belonging to pensioners in his personal bank accounts, ED arrests former official of EPFO

By Inder Vashisth

Enforcement Directorate has provisionally attached assets worth ₹1.13 Crore belonging to Kondapalli Satyanarayana Rao, a (retired) Section Supervisor in the Kadapa Sub-Regional Office of the Employment Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) and his family members, under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, in a case of fraudulent diversion of ₹1.64 Crore belonging to the pensioners into his personal bank accounts. The attached assets are in the form of residential flat (₹98.68 lacs) and bank balances (₹12.64 Lacs).

ED initiated money laundering investigations on the basis of FIR registered by CBI, Anti-Corruption Bureau, Hyderabad, against Kondapalli Satyanarayana Rao and his family members, for fraudulently diverting ₹1.64 Crore of public pension funds, into the personal bank accounts of K. Satyanarayana Rao and his close relatives.

Money laundering investigation by ED revealed that the Bank Reconciliation Statement (BRS) data was tampered with by Kondapalli Satyanarayana Rao by inserting fraudulent bank account numbers and fictitious names against randomly selected Pension Payment Order numbers from the pensioners’ data and those who had no pension for over three years due to non-submission of life certificate and cases involving pension-cum-arrears and other benefits.

The BRS data was downloaded through system protocol available in the Electronic Data Processing reports and copied in a CD and handed over to the banks without any hard copy of the summary report showing the number of pensioners and amount of pension to be disbursed, making it vulnerable to manipulation. The data was uploaded by the bankers without any cross verification. Investigation further revealed that total amount of₹1.64 Crore was diverted and credited into the accounts of the accused and his close relatives between 2011 and 2014. Further investigation in under progress.