The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said it has arrested the senior manager of the Airports Authority of India (AAI) for allegedly siphoning off Rs 232 crore to his personal account.
CBI registered a First Information Report (FIR) after receiving a complaint from AAI against the accused.
“We have arrested the accused identified as Rahul Vijay, who was earlier heading the finance and accounts branch at AAI’s Dehradun airport from 2019 to 2023. Currently, he is posted at the Jaipur airport with the same portfolio. Searches were conducted last week at his official and residential premises in Jaipur, which led to the recovery of incriminating materials, including documents on immovable properties and valuable securities,” a CBI spokesperson said.
During the investigation, CBI found that the accused had manipulated electronic records by creating duplicate and fictitious assets and inflating the values of certain assets, including by adding “zeros” to entries to evade routine detection.
“An amount of around Rs 232 crore was allegedly diverted into the accused’s personal bank account. Preliminary analysis of bank transactions further indicates that the funds so credited were thereafter transferred to trading accounts by the accused, thereby siphoning public money,” the spokesperson said.
In the complaint, ChandraKanth P, Senior Manager, Finance Department, AAI, alleged that the accused engaged in a systematic scheme of fraud and embezzlement of AAI funds by manipulating official and electronic records while posted in Dehradun.
“After examination, it was found that the amount was transferred by the accused, since he was the authorised signatory to operate the bank account of AAI for its regular and official functions. Public funds to the tune of approximately Rs 232 crore were misappropriated by him into personal accounts,” he alleged.
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The incident came to light when the complainant was reviewing the asset records of previous years – 2019-20 to 2022-23 – of Dehradun Airport and noticed some abnormal capitalisation of assets.
“A committee was immediately constituted by the competent authority of AAl to verify the records and financial transactions. During verification, it was found that Rahul Vijay, while posted at Dehradun Airport, has passed some fictitious entries and fraudulently transferred an amount of Rs 232 crore (as detected till date) to his personal bank account from February 2019 to August 2022,” the complainant alleged in the FIR.
ChandraKanth alleged they found during their enquiry that the accused had created three different user IDs for the official bank account of AAI with the SBI Bank. “He used a surreptitious mode of transferring the amount from the AAI account to his own bank accounts by first transferring small amounts and then huge amounts to avoid detection. He has shown an asset creation of about Rs 189 crore in the official records, which never existed and was found false only to get the money transferred to his personal accounts,” he alleged.
The complainant also alleged that the accused transferred money to a contractor of AAI and then transferred the same amount to his own account by inflating the figure.
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“On September 29, 2021, he created genuine assets worth Rs. 67.81 crore for the new terminal building phase-1 electrical work. On September 30, he created 17 additional fictitious assets of Rs 189 crore out of the 13 original assets valued at Rs 13.58 crore by adding one “Zero” and duplicating the entries and got the entire money transferred into his account. Also, an amount of Rs 43 crore through fraudulent entries was charged off under various expenditure heads at different dates in the same time period,” he alleged.
