A senior official of the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) has been arrested by the Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) in a case of alleged embezzlement of ₹20 crores from official funds.
DJB joint director Naresh Singh’s arrest is the fourth in an alleged scam in the establishment of e-kiosks at different DJB offices for the collection of water bills.
He was put under arrest after hours of questioning by ACB officials late on Monday night.
As per officials, the DJB had awarded a contract to Corporation Bank (now Union Bank of India) for setting up automotive bill payment collection machines at different locations in Delhi to facilitate its customers’ water bill payments.
However, the bank gave the contract further to Fresh Pay IT Solution, which in turn, awarded the contract to Aurrum e-payment. The payment was to be collected till October 2019 but it was collected till March 2020.
Three people, including directors of Fresh Pay IT Solutions and Aurrum e-payment, were arrested earlier by the ACB in a case registered in December last year.
According to ACB joint commissioner Madhur Verma, Singh was receiving a bribe amount of lakhs of rupees from directors of Aurrum and Fresh Pay. He didn’t reconcile the bill payments with the two companies against his mandate.
“From 2015, when the first time the contract was extended, he helped Fresh Pay in extending the contract of collection of bill payments from e-kiosks year after year till 2020. He kept silent over the reconciliation of water bills while getting the extension done for the Fresh Pay company from Delhi Jal Board,” said Verma.
The three people arrested earlier in the case are: Aurrum e-payment director Rajendran Nair (56), its CFO Gopi Kumar Kedia (52), and Fresh Pay IT Solutions director Dr Abhilash Vasukuttan Pillai.
ACB officials said that Aurrum e-payment collected bill payments from various kiosks in Delhi and brought the cash to its Connaught Place office. Thereafter, they embezzled the amount from cash collected and deposited the rest in their account with a Federal bank. Then they transferred the money to DJB through RTGS at their convenience.
The company has also been accused of not transferring the complete amount to the DJB. Reconciliation was also not conducted regularly by DJB.
During the course of the investigation, it was revealed that the amount collected from DJB kiosks was transferred from the Federal Bank of Aurrum e-payment to four or five sister concerns of Raju Nair, his relatives, and many more. They made payments like rent, the salary of employees of Aurrum e–payment and Fresh Pay IT Solution, and other expenses of companies from this account of Federal Bank out of the cash collected from the DJB kiosk.
The contract mandated a regular reconciliation which was not done, said Verma.
However, none of the parties – DJB, the bank, Fresh Pay IT Solutions, and Aurrum e-payment – reconciled the collected amount. On its part, DJB later said that there was a pending amount on part of the vendor which is to be deposited in the account of DJB. The contract was renewed from time to time which eventually led to a loss of ₹20 crores to the board.