Irregularities worth lakhs of rupees committed by officials of Indian embassy in South Korea.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has started investigations into financial irregularities worth lakhs of rupees allegedly committed by some officials of the Indian embassy in Seoul, South Korea, between 2007 and 2008.
A highly-placed government source told DNA that the ministry of external affairs had stumbled upon the scam last year.
The ministry found that money was withdrawn from the embassy’s account in the Korean Exchange Bank using signed cheques.
The swindled money was actually collected from people as consular, passport and visa fees. While the exact details of the swindled amount could not be ascertained, sources said it runs into lakhs of rupees.
The ministry of external affairs audit has found that between 2007 and 2008, withdrawals worth Rs1-2 lakh were made more than a dozen times from the account through signed cheques, the source said.
The revelations have shocked top ministry of external affairs officials in Delhi, including joint secretary RK Tyagi, who is also the chief vigilance officer in the ministry.
The investigating agency is focusing its probe on the officials who worked in the Seoul embassy between 2007 and 2008. “The fraudster has to be an embassy official because no outsider can have original bank cheques signed by the competent authorities,” said the source.
In all embassies, the head of chancery and disbursal officer are responsible for keeping accounts of all the consular revenue in the Indian embassy.
Sources said the “insider” also fudged the account book, which maintains the record of revenue collected from people in the form of passport fee, consular fee and visa fee.
“The embassy doesn’t not collect fee directly. The people in fact deposit money in the embassy’s account and produce receipt to the embassy office,” an official in the investigating agency said.
The embassy’s record of the money deposited by different people does not match with the account book, the source said.
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