An employee of a private recruitment company in Delhi allegedly executed a clever plan, defrauding the company of crores over a decade. Radhaballav Nath, a former finance manager at ManpowerGroup Service Private Limited manipulated the company's payroll system to surreptitiously employ his unemployed wife and siphon off salaries amounting to over Rs 4 crore for years.
The shocking scheme, unveiled in December last year, left the firm counting the losses. Authorities are now investigating the financial crime that has rattled the company and left it questioning its data privacy measures.
The company had entrusted only three officers - the director (human resources), the chief human resource officer (CHRO), and the accused Nath - with access to monthly payroll and reimbursement data. Nath was a crucial link between the outside payroll vendor and other departments.
His ploy involved adding an additional row with his wife's name, Sasmita Raul, and a corresponding salary amount in the payroll data. He also tampered with his own salary figure, leaving no trace.
"The modus operandi adopted by Mr. Radhaballav Nath was that after receiving the approved excel file containing the payroll data from the office of the CHRO, Mr. Radhaballav Nath used to insert an additional row having his wife's name," explained the company's complaint to Delhi Police.
Investigations revealed that Nath uploaded the manipulated payroll file to the bank's portal using the computer system of another finance manager. To cover his tracks, he deleted the file after the upload.
The deception came to light in December 2022 when the company conducted an internal investigation and suspended Nath. He admitted to the fraud, confessing that he had illegally transferred a staggering Rs 3.6 crore to his wife's bank account since 2012.
Additionally, Nath confessed to inflating his own salary and transferring Rs 60 lakh to his account, culminating in a total loss of Rs 4.2 crore to the company.
"ManpowerGroup checked its record and it shows that it has never employed the wife of Mr. Radhaballav Nath in any capacity. This fact was also admitted by Mr. Radhaballav Nath during the internal investigation," the company’s FIR read.
The accused used the ill-gotten gains to purchase properties in Delhi, Jaipur, and his hometown in Odisha, as well as investing in mutual funds and other financial schemes.
(With inputs from PTI)
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