21:55
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has said that a former deputy vice president of the Kotak Mahindra Bank, two other staffers of the private lender, and an employee of the Panchkula (Haryana) municipal corporation defrauded the state of over Rs 100 crore.
The four allegedly perpetrated a fraud to "embezzle" the funds belonging to the state government department, the ED said.
The federal agency made the claim in a chargesheet filed on July 30 against nine accused before a Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court.
The money laundering case stems from an FIR filed by the Haryana Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) on charges of embezzlement of funds belonging to the Panchkula municipal corporation through a "deep-rooted and well-organised" criminal conspiracy.
The ED, in a statement, said that Kotak Mahindra Bank's former deputy vice president, Pushpinder Singh, in connivance with Vikas Kaushik, an official of Municipal Corporation (MC) Panchkula, and another Kotak Mahindra employee, Dilip Raghav, opened two "unauthorised" bank accounts in the civic body's name using a series of "fake" documents and authorisations.
"All genuine communications, authorisation letters and instructions sent by municipal corporation Panchkula were disregarded, and a series of parallel authorisation letters were created by Singh and Kaushik, with the support of others, for the purpose of opening these two illegal accounts," the ED said. -- PTI
