UP: EOW To Question Union Agriculture Secretary In Connection With Rs 4,000 Crore EPF Scam, Says Report 

The Uttar Pradesh Police's Economic Offences Wing (EOW) was preparing to send a notice to Union Agriculture Secretary Sanjay Agarwal, the former chairman of UP Power Corporation Limited (UPPCL), for recording his statement in the Rs 4,000 crore Employees' Provident Fund (EPF) scam.

The EOW, which is investigating the scam until the CBI takes over, said that it needed to record the statements of all members of the trust when the funds were invested into the Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Limited (DHFL).

EOW Director General, R P Singh said: "The documents seized from the office at Shakti Bhawan reveal discrepancy on the date of meeting of the trust. The meeting was held on 22 March 2017, but was shown to have taken place on 24 March. The meeting note bears signature of all the trust members and we need to take statement of all members of the trust, including an IAS, who was chairman of the trust, when funds were invested in DHFL."

The EOW found that the note that allowed employees' provident fund money to be invested in triple A rated companies, carried the signatures of Agarwal, then UPPCL MD A P Mishra, general manager finance P K Gupta, director finance Sudhanshu Dwiwedi and director personnel and administration S.P. Pandey.

While Mishra, Gupta and Dwiwedi have been arrested, Pandey died in 2017.

Sources said that the EOW has also zeroed in on 14 Uttar Pradesh-based brokerage firms which initiated contract between UPPCL and DHFL for investment of fund in 2016.

The directors of all these firms would be interrogated. Five of the firms based in Meerut, Ghaziabad and Delhi have been found to be non-existent on ground.

The EOW is also looking for Abhinav Gupta, son of P K Gupta, who runs a real estate firm, and is presently absconding.

Meanwhile, DHFL has issued a statement saying it was committed to return the invested money along with interest to the UPPCL power sector employee trust.

It claimed to have returned a principal amount of Rs 1,864 crore and paid Rs 208 crore in interest on the total Rs 4,132 crore deposits. The firm said it was refunding maturity amount with interest in past, but was forced to stop payments following a Mumbai High Court order.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)