Rs 1.68-crore scam in Puncofed: Report

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, July 6

The chief auditor of cooperative societies has unearthed a Rs1.68-crore scam in Punjab State Cooperative Development Federation (Puncofed), a lesser known wing of the department dealing in cooperative education and training.

The audit report reveals that Rs 47.84 lakh has been embezzled, Rs 36.87 lakh misused and Rs 78.41 lakh spent unnecessarily, besides overdrawing of salary by employees, telephone expenses and loan advances in the past 10 years.

A clerk, who got promoted as assistant press manager, withdrew more salary than the laid down criteria. He owes Rs 1.41 lakh in addition to 8 per cent interest (Rs 2.49 lakh in total) to the department. The employees took Rs 9.19 lakh as advance from 2014-17, of which Rs 2.46 lakh was taken by a caretaker alone.

The report found that an additional registrar (D) took telephone expenses of Rs 85,858 from August 2013 to March 2019. The recoverable amount now stands at Rs 1.05 lakh.

The audit report has also pointed fingers at Chairman Kulwinder Singh, Vice Chairman Baldev Singh Chakkal, Managing Director SK Batish, Directors Tejinder Singh, Hardyal Singh, Harnek Singh, Harbhajan Singh, Aatma Singh and Financial Commissioner, Cooperatives, SS Mann for over-withdrawal of salary.

As per the report, the last meeting of the board was convened on August 11, 2017, but expenses up to April 1, 2017 were not passed in it. The report also points out that despite the fact that the organisation was running in losses, the board did not pay heed to unnecessary expenses of Rs 78.41 lakh incurred by it during the 10-year period.

It was found that the actual cash books for 2010-11, 2012-13 and 2013-14 were not presented. This proved that such a practice had been followed to hide embezzlement.