Gurgaon firm alleges fraud by Scottish agency officials

GURGAON: The Gurgaon police have registered an FIR against a Bangalore-based firm and two officers of Scottish Prison Services (SPS), an agency of the Scottish government, in a $15-million forgery and cheating case. A Gurgaon-based BPO had lodged a complaint that the firm and SPS officers had issued fake letters and emails, farming out the back-end operations of SPS to them.
The Gurgaon-based BPO IORB Technologies Pvt Ltd has alleged that after getting letters with forged signatures and emails from Pansys Infotech Ltd, it had made a huge investment for developing the infrastructure and hiring the manpower needed for the task.
The cops have slapped Section 66 of the IT Act and Section 420 of the IPC on the accused. The case was filed at the DLF-II police station on November 18. Complainant Deepak Kapoor had told the police that the work order for back-end operations involving document management and data punching for legacy paper documents was issued to IORB by Pansys Infotech on November 19, 2009.
IORB had pumped in about Rs 1 crore to create the infrastructure by taking the premises of Reliance Web Store Ltd in Goa on rent. It had paid the rent till November 2010. The firm has submitted bank documents to support its claims.
IORB had received an email from the two accused officers of SPS, including its head of finance. It had mentioned the intent to give the work to the city-based firm.
When one of the senior executives of the Gurgaon firm, Mangla Nagraj, went to London to follow this up, she detected the fraud. The FIR said when she contacted the SPS officers, they denied issuing any such email or intent letter. The head of finance had also assured her that he will unearth the scam. But IORB has received no information from him to date.
IORB alleged that the two SPS officers are hand in glove with Pansys executives. Samrat Sharma, director and CTO of Pansys Infotech Ltd, said, "There is only one side to the story. There are major discrepancies in the investments made by the firm. We still have a working agreement with them and have not yet received any intimation from the Gurgaon police. If we are asked for an explanation, we will officially submit our response."
DCP (east) Maheswar Dayal said they are investigating the case and appropriate action would be initiated against the accused.