Six Haryana IAS officers named - what CBI’s 3rd chargesheet in ₹504 crore IDFC First Bank fund case says

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has named a total of 19 accused, including six IAS officers of Haryana cadre, in the third chargesheet in connection with the misappropriation of ₹504-crore funds through IDFC First Bank and AU Small Finance Bank.

The IAS officers named in the CBI chargesheet on Wednesday are Mohd. Shayin, Saket Kumar, Pardeep Kumar, Vineet Garg, Ram Kumar Singh and Pankaj Agarwal.

Three officials of IDFC First Bank Shamim Ahmed Dar, Sudha Goyal, Kuldeep Singh, along with AU Small Finance Bank's Charanjeet Singh Randhawa, have also been named in the chargesheet filed before a special court in Panchkula in connection with the case.

Haryana government officials named as accused in the Chargesheet including Deepti Kaushik, Rajesh Goyal, Prince Sharma, Saurav Kumar, Parveen Kumar, Surender Jain, Surinder Kaur, Amit Kumar and Jugal Kishor.

What CBI said

Beena Yadav, the Spokesperson of CBI, in a statement said that the accused have been charged with criminal conspiracy, cheating, destruction of evidence, forgery, using false documents as genuine, falsification of accounts, criminal breach of trust and abetment under BNS, and offences of bribery and criminal misconduct under Prevention of Corruption Act.

"Investigation established that the accused public servants, in connivance with the accused bankers of IDFC First Bank and AU Small Finance Bank, orchestrated and executed the fraudulent scheme in a planned sequence," the spokesperson said.

The CBI has already chargesheeted 18 other accused persons in this case, which included officials from the two banks, public servants of the state government, private individuals and private companies.

"With the filing of the present chargesheet, the total number of persons chargesheeted so far in this case is now 37. CBI has conducted 54 searches and seized incriminating evidences including gold worth approx. ₹20 crore in this case and arrested 26 accused so far," the spokesperson said.

IDFC First Bank fraud case

The IDFC First Bank fraud case pertains to the siphoning off of public funds from eight Haryana government departments. The scam was orchestrated through a network of former bank employees, middlemen, and government officials who transferred the funds from various empanelled banks into specific branches of IDFC First Bank and AU Small Finance Bank.

The fraud came to light in February this year, when the government decided to pull its money out, only to find a gross mismatch between actual bank balances and the figures in its records at the Chandigarh branch.

The CBI alleged that the amounts so transferred were layered through multiple bank accounts and converted into cash, and the accused wrongfully enriched themselves.

"Eight departments and organisations of the state government-- Department of Panchayat, Municipal Corporations of Panchkula and Kalka, Haryana School Shiksha Pariyojna Parishad, Haryana Labour Welfare Board, Haryana State Agricultural Marketing Board, Haryana State Pollution Control Board, and Haryana Power Generation Corporation Limited-- were affected by this scam," the CBI said.

"In this process the guidelines of the Finance Department, Haryana government, on financial prudence and fraud prevention, were violated. The funds from these accounts were misappropriated through fraudulent means and transferred to third parties who were not connected with government department," the CBI said.