Top EPFO officer suspended
The Union Ministry of Labour and
Employment has suspended P Sudhakar Babu, the second senior most officer in
Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), in the Rs 72-crore PF scam
related to Andhra Pradesh-based Chaitanya Group of Educational Institutions.
The case is being investigated by the CBI’s Anti-Corruption Bureau, Hyderabad,
which requested for his suspension.
Sudhakar
Babu was earlier posted in Hyderabad as Additional Central PF Commissioner. He
was later posted as Additional Central PF Commissioner of Karnataka and Goa
states. Babu was suspended Friday evening based on a request by the CBI which
had filed an FIR last September against Babu and four regional PF commissioners
— G R Suchindernath, K S Arya, A Ravi Kumar, and S S Shastry. “Sudhakar Babu is
the main accused in the case, we had sent a request to the ministry. The
investigation is still going on, it is a very lengthy process,’’ CBI SP H
Venkatesh said on Sunday.
According to the FIR, in March 2006 these five PF officers,
conducted raids at various locations of Chaitanya Group of Institutions in
Andhra Pradesh and allegedly found discrepancies in depositing the PF of about
Rs 72 crore with the EPFO. Chaitanya Group was allegedly deducting PF from
salaries of about 4,500 employees but was either not crediting it to their PF
accounts or was crediting lesser amounts or crediting PF accounts of only a few
employees. The PF officers calculated that about Rs 72 crore was due from
Chaitanya Group to the EPFO. As part of the raid, the officers seized payrolls,
accounts books, salary accounts details and other records of about 4,500
employees from various locations across the state.
However,
instead of initiating the process of recovering the due Rs 70 crore and
penalising Chaitanya Group, the five PF commissioners allegedly made a deal
with the educational institution and an alleged settlement was reached.
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