Accountant confesses funds embezzlement

Agrawal,who is one of the key accused in the scam,was taken in police custody for 12 hours by SIB of Co-operative cell of UP Police.

Co-operative cell Director General (DG) Suvrat Tripathi said that Agrawal was taken in custody at 8 am today as per court’s order and will be sent to jail at 8 pm.

An SIB official said that Agrawal confessed his role in withdrawal of Rs 12.36 crore from LACCFED account in connivance with then chairman Sushil Katiyar,General Manager (GM) Administration & Finance Pankaj Tripathi,chief engineer Govind Sharan Srivastava and public relation officer (PRO) Praveen Singh. He admitted that the money was issued through bearer cheques in the names of 16 LACCFED engineers between October 2010 and October 2011.

Agrawal confirmed the names of engineers as RK Mishra who is present chief engineer (Rs 3.22 crore) and executive engineers RK Singh (Rs 23 lakh),Ajay Kumar Dohre (Rs 23 lakh),PK Singh (Rs 1.36 crore),RP Singh (Rs 60 lakh),Pramod Kumar Singh (Rs 1.25 crore),Sandeep Kumar (Rs 44 lakh),SB Singh (Rs 42 lakh),PK Bajpai (Rs 57 lakh),Pranay Kumar Tripathi (Rs 44 lakh),SK Ojha (Rs 40 lakh),Onkar Singh (Rs 29 lakh),Neeraj Khare (Rs 84 lakh) and Sanjay Kumar (Rs 19 lakh).

Other engineers include Assistant Engineer Awadhesh Kumarand JEs Rajesh Mohan Tripathi and Triloki Singh.

The SIB official said that Agrawal also confirmed that he along with the chief engineer used to accompany these engineers whenever they withdrew the amounts from Lalbagh branch of Punjab National Bank. They all used to hand over the money to then GM Tripathi and PRO Praveen Singh who was close friend of the chairman.

Sushil Katiyar and Praveen Singh are absconding at present.

The accused told the SIB officials that each of the concerned engineer used to get 15 to 20 per cent of the amount withdrawn in their names while Agrawal and the chief engineer used to get a share of 2 to 5 per cent.

Agrawal also said that Praveen Singh was the key person behind the scam,as he used get the government projects allotted to LACCFED and the entire amount allocated for the works transferred to the agency’s account.