The police registered a case on a complaint by HDFC Bank, which had outsourced doorstep cash collection for offline tickets to a private firm.
Case after Rs 5.25 crore found missing from daily collection account of Statue of UnityThe complaint, filed by the manager of a Vadodara branch of HDFC bank, states that the money was allegedly siphoned off during the period between October 2018 and March 2020.
The Narmada District police booked staff of Writer Business Services Private Limited, a cash management company, for the alleged theft of Rs 5.25 crore pertaining to the daily cash collection from the Statue of Unity and its allied projects. The complaint, filed by the manager of a Vadodara branch of HDFC bank, states that the money was allegedly siphoned off during the period between October 2018 and March 2020.
The Kevadia police station, which has registered the complaint, has started an investigation into the financial transactions of SoU.
The complaint filed late on Monday states that the bank has engaged Writer Business for offering doorstep cash collection facility to the Statue of Unity, which had offline ticket counters before the Covid-19 lockdown for entry to various projects of the tourist spot as well as the regular parking charges.
An official of SoU said, “The HDFC bank has been providing services for the cash collected daily by the SoU administration at various counters for offline ticketing and parking fees, and depositing it in the Statue of Unity bank account in its Vadodara branch. The receipt of the cash received is issued to the SoU administration and it is periodically reconciled with the cash deposit entries made in the bank account.”
During the reconciliation carried out with the HDFC after the easing of Covid-19 curbs, the auditors of SoU noticed that the receipts submitted by executives of Writer Business on behalf of the bank did not match with the actual entries into the account.
“An amount of Rs 5.25 crore was missing although the receipts in our record showed that the agent of the HDFC bank had been handed over the amount. The agents provide SoU with a receipt on the letterhead of HDFC. The issue was raised with the bank, which proactively initiated a probe,” the official said.
