Accounts officer booked for siphoning off ₹2 cr from India's Permanent Mission in Geneva to bankroll gambling venture

A former accounts officer was booked by the CBI for allegedly siphoning more than 2 lakh Swiss francs (around ₹2 crore) from India's Permanent Mission in Geneva to bankroll his crypto-gambling ventures.

According to a PTI report, citing CBI officials, Mohit joined the Permanent Mission in Geneva on 17 December 2024 as an Assistant Section Officer.

He was responsible for physically submitting payment instructions to the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), where the Mission's accounts are maintained in both US dollars (USD) and Swiss francs (CHF).

The discrepancy was detected in the CHF account, said the officials of the investigating agency.

What is the process of payments?

The Mission made payments to Swiss vendors in CHF based on their invoices, which carried pre-printed QR codes having the vendor's bank and invoice details coded in them.

The physical copy of the QR codes, along with payment instruction slips signed by the Attache (Admin and Establishment) and DDO Tushar Lakra, is submitted to the UBS to make the necessary payments.

It was a common practice to collate a number of QR codes under a common bank payment instruction slip.

How did the account officer siphon off the money?

According to the PTI report, Mohit was assigned the duty to physically carry the QR codes and the payment instruction slips to the UBS. He also enjoyed account viewing rights along with the Head of Chancery, Amit Kumar.

It is suspected that Mohit surreptitiously replaced some of the vendor QR codes with a self-generated QR code, which diverted the payments to his personal CHF account in UBS instead of the vendor's account.

Using the trick, he allegedly siphoned off over two lakh CHF – more than ₹2 crore – to his personal account maintained in the UBS this year.

In the process, pre-printed acknowledgement slips attached to the QR codes were not disturbed.

Mohit managed to conceal the diversion of funds, as he edited the monthly bank statements by replacing his name with that of the intended vendor.

The doctored statements were then used during routine reconciliations, effectively neutralising a key financial safeguard and allowing the misappropriations to proceed undetected for months.

How did the scam surface?

According to PTI report, the scam surfaced when auditors noticed duplicate payments to a local vendor, Ejey Travels, prompting an in-depth review of the transactions.

The analysis detected a suspected loss of about CHF 200,000, roughly ₹2 crore. When confronted by the authorities, Mohit gave a written confession admitting diverting the funds to bankroll his crypto-gambling activities.

Mohit was immediately repatriated to India along with his family.

He claimed he paid CHF 12,830 to Ejey Travels to deposit in the Mission's account. The entries of the amount were found in the Mission's account.

In addition, CHF 9,825 and CHF 28,000 were credited by Mohit into the Mission's account before his repatriation.

CBI books Mohit

The CBI has booked Mohit under the provisions of criminal breach of trust, forgery, falsification of accounts and the Prevention of Corruption Act.

This was one of the number of cases where government officials embezzled public money to funnel their online trading, gaming, gambling or cyrptotrading activities.

Other embezzlement case this year

Earlier this year, the CBI arrested Rahul Vijay, a senior finance manager in the Airports Authority of India (AAI), for allegedly embezzling more than ₹232 crore of public funds and diverting them into his personal online trading accounts.

The CBI also booked a Bank of India officer, Hitesh Singla, for allegedly diverting more than ₹16 crore from 127 accounts, including dormant ones, which he allegedly funnelled into online trading and crypto dealings.