Even as Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy has been focussing on unearthing various irregularities that took during the previous Telugu Desam Party government, yet another major scam in the siphoning of funds right in the chief minister’s office surfaced.
The Anti-Corruption Bureau is learnt to have unearthed a major scam in the diversion of funds released under Chief Minister’s Relief Fund by manipulating the list of beneficiaries.
The ACB reportedly found the role of at least 50 persons including personal assistants of the MLAs and their followers in the scam.
The chief minister is learnt to have taken the issue seriously and gave strict instructions to the ACB authorities to dig out the scam and recover the entire amount from the accused.
According to reports, the preliminary inquiries revealed that there had been large scale siphoning of funds from the CMRF since 2014.
The accused reportedly swindled the CMRF funds by producing fabricated documents in the name of non-existent beneficiaries.
The ACB registered a case based on the complaints lodged by the officials. Some of the accused have been taken into custody and inquiries revealed the role of several others in the scam.
In all, 88 files have been found to be fake and the accused had siphoned off nearly Rs 117 crore.
The ACB has been inquiring into the scandal since May this year. It has interrogated several persons suspected to be related to the case. Some others have not responded to the ACB notices.
The ACB is expected to come out with a statement in a day or two on the entire case and the involvement of people in the scam.
