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As many as 19 locations under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002 were searched by the Directorate of Enforcement (ED), Ahmedabad Zonal Office on November 29, 2024, in multiple cases related to the misappropriation of government funds in post offices in Gujarat. The action was in consequence of the cases being investigated by ED on the basis of several FIRs registered by ACB, and CBI, said a press release on Sunday.
In one of the cases, the accused Sub Postmasters in conspiracy with the accused private person fraudulently reopened earlier closed Recurring Deposits (RD) accounts and then fraudulently closed the same and, thereby, misappropriated the government money amounting 606 Recurring Deposit accounts amounting to Rs 18.60 Crore, the release said. In another case, the accused, while working as Sub Post Master in Criminal conspiracy with others had committed misappropriation of government money amounting to Rs. 9.97 Crore during the period of 16.10.2019 to 21.11.2022. The accused public servant adopted a modus operandi of manually uploading fake payments through the utility tool - SAP (Departmental Software) in the Daily Transaction Report of Mengni Sub Office in the head of old KVP Principal amount and old KVP interest, said the release. In a separate case, Recurring Deposit (RD) accounts of the Ravalwadi post office, once closed were again closed twice or thrice with higher denominations and in different names of depositors, by creating closure documents fraudulently. Instead of depositing the accepted amount, the fraudster diverted the closure amount of fraudulent RD accounts to new accounts under various schemes by mentioning re-investment on a forged RD closure form. Another technique of cheating customers was that the fraudster used to accept deposits from their customers for opening new accounts, issuing passbooks to them by reusing old passbooks/ new fake passbooks but in fact, they didn't open any accounts in their names in Sanchay post/ FINACLE, said the release. Further, in another case, the accused (the then Sub Postmaster, Surajkuji Sub Post Office, Jamnagar Division, Jamnagar) knowingly used forged documents as genuine, for the purpose of pecuniary advantage and thereby, misappropriated the Government Money and caused wrongful loss to the Post Offices to the tune of Rs 2.94 Crore. In the other case, the accused persons (Savings Bank Postal Assistant Chotila Sub Post Office, LSG Postal Assistant Surendranagar Head Post Office and Sub Post Master, Chotila) have entered into a criminal conspiracy and they misappropriated the funds from various types of postal deposit accounts causing wrongful loss to the Post Offices to the tune of Rs.1.57 Crore. As a result of searches conducted amounts to the tune of Rs 1 Crore (approx.) were seized. Further, details of various immovable properties exceeding Rs 1.5 Crore have been recovered. Further investigation is under progress, said the release. (ANI)
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