Pension scam: ED attaches assets worth Rs. 1.13 cr of former Kadapa EPFO official

Hyderabad: The sleuths of the Enforcement Directorate have provisionally attached assets worth Rs. 1.13 crore of Kondapalli Satyanarayana Rao, a retired section supervisor of Kadapa sub-regional office of the Employment Provident Fund Organization (EPFO).

The man is accused of fraudulently diverting Rs. 1.64 crore belonging to pensioners into his personal bank accounts.

The ED was investigating a case registered by CBI-Anti Corruption Hyderabad unit. Investigations revealed that Satyanarayana Rao tampered the Bank Reconciliation Statement (BRS) data by inserting fraudulent bank account numbers and fictitious names against randomly selected pension payment order numbers in the pensioners' data.

These ghost names had received 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 Rs. 1.64 crore was diverted and credited into the accounts of the accused and his close relatives between 2011 and 2014," revealed ED's probe.

The attached assets are in the form of residential flat (Rs. 98.68 lakh) and bank balances (Rs. 12.64 lakh).