ECGC official moves HC over transfer

MUMBAI, JULY 13: An official of the Export Credit Guarantee Corporation of India Ltd, (ECGC) which comes under the Ministry of Commerce, moved the Bombay High Court recently claiming mala fides in his transfer order saying that he was being victimised because he exposed internal cases of corruption in the organisation.

While the division bench of Justice M B Ghodeswar and Justice B N Srikrishna refused to interfere in the transfer of Ganga Sharan Gupta, internal auditor, Western Region, in the head offices of Mumbai, they held that it was the “bounden duty of the Union of India and the Ministry of Commerce to have the corruption cases investigated thoroughly, both by internal machinery as well as through the agency of the Central Bureau of Investigation and to initiate action both departmental and legal…unless cases have been closed by the concerned investigation agencies.” In order to ensure the investigation continues, the court directed, “that the ECGC will make available the official’s presence andcooperation to the the CBI and or other investigating agencies as and when his presence is required.”ECGC, a government of India undertaking, offers credit insurance to exporters to help make good their losses if they are unable to realise funds from the foreign buyer. For this purpose ECGC collects a premium from them, which makes it incumbent on the ECGC that the funds are invested in such a way that it gets maximum yield. However, Gupta a chartered accountant who has been working with the ECGC since 1973 and in the internal audit department of the head office of Mumbai since April 1998, has claimed that he has exposed cases of internal irregularities that has caused an alleged loss of more than Rs 100 crore to the organisation. He claimed that he had been transferred to Ahmedabad in April 1999 was done to keep him away from the records in the head office to enable the organisation to protect its “guilty officers”. He argued that the transfer, when he had just completed one year in the department wasagainst the transfer guidelines of the department which laid down that an official had to continue in the post for a minimum of two years.

The matter was first heard by a division bench of Justice N J Pandya and Justice S S Parkar on May 7, 1999 which directed the ECGC to file an affidavit. His transfer orders were stayed till June 14, 1999.

At the court of Justice Srikrishna, counsel for Gupta expressed fears that once he is out of the office in Mumbai, his cases would not be pursued.