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CBI has booked Rahul Vijay, senior manager at Airport Authority of India, for diverting over Rs 232 crore to personal accounts through fictitious assets and fraudulent accounting.
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The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has booked a senior manager from the finance and accounts department at the Airport Authority of India (AAI), for allegedly diverting over Rs 232 crore into his personal accounts.
It is learnt that the alleged misappropriation took place during his tenure at Dehradun airport over three years.
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According to news agency PTI, an internal audit revealed the embezzlement, highlighting unusual asset capitalisation in financial records between 2019-20 and 2022-23.
Following the audit, the AAI formed a committee to investigate the findings, which uncovered a complex pattern of fictitious accounting entries, inflated asset values, and unauthorised transfers from AAI’s accounts to the personal accounts of the accused official, identified as Rahul Vijay.
On August 18, Chandrakanth P, another senior manager in finance at AAI, lodged a complaint with the CBI, leading to the registration of the FIR to be investigated by the Central probe agency’s Economic Offences Unit.
Vijay allegedly created non-existent capital assets and duplicated legitimate work orders to siphon large sums into his accounts. He, being the authorised signatory for AAI’s bank accounts with the State Bank of India, reportedly set up three different user IDs to facilitate secret fund transfers. Initially, he tested the system with smaller transactions before moving to larger amounts, PTI reported.
The complaint stated that Vijay falsely recorded asset creation worth about Rs 189 crore in official documents, which did not exist, to transfer money to his personal accounts.
“He showed an asset creation of about Rs 189 crore in the official records, which never existed, only to get the money transferred to his personal accounts,” the complaint alleged, according to PTI.
He also transferred funds to an AAI contractor and then inflated the figures to transfer money to his own account.
For instance, on September 29, 2021, Vijay documented legitimate assets worth Rs 67.81 crore for electrical work on New Terminal Building Phase and the next day, he created 17 fictitious assets worth Rs 189 crore by duplicating entries from 13 original assets valued at Rs 13.58 crore and added a zero, transferring the entire sum to his account, the complainant further alleged.
The PTI report further mentioned that the complaint alleged that additionally, Rs 43 crore was fraudulently charged off under various revenue expenditure heads during the said period.
About the Author
Manisha Roy is a Senior Sub-Editor at News18.com’s general desk. She comes with an experience of over 5 years in media industry. She covers politics and other hard news. She can be contacted at Manisha.Roy@nw18…Read More
Manisha Roy is a Senior Sub-Editor at News18.com’s general desk. She comes with an experience of over 5 years in media industry. She covers politics and other hard news. She can be contacted at Manisha.Roy@nw18… Read More
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