Season of scams fells steel major

KOLKATA: The Kolkata Police on Thursday unearthed an export scam at one of the country’s oldest iron and steel company, IISCO. Four people, including an IISCO official, were arrested.
Because of the scam, the sick PSU incurred a loss of Rs crore and the state government lost Rs 1 lakh in taxes, DC (DD) Soumen Mitra said.
Investigations revealed that a racket procured 4,500 tonnes of pig iron for export to Bangladesh.They sold the entire consignment in the domestic market and yet enjoyed customs concessions and export drawbacks by forging a large number of documents.
The loss was even bigger as the consignment was much larger than actually shown, he said. Mitra said Uttam Sarogi of Uttam Ispat, a Burnpurbased scrap dealer, IISCO assistant general manager sales) Abhijit Dey, Multiexport’s Sailesh Pajla and K.K. Enterprise’s Krishna Kumar Kejriwal were arrested from their homes.
According to investigators, Uttam Ispat first bagged the export contract. The pig iron consignment was acquired. But instead of exporting, the racket sold it in the domestic market.
The sleuths went through a large number of documents including bank papers. Probe revealed that the racket forged bank, central excise and land customs documents. Police also scrutinised papers supposedly obtained from Hili and Mehdipur border checkposts in Murshidabad.
The forged documents showed that the export consignment had crossed the border through these two points.
IISCO authorities lodged a complaint with the city police detective de-partment a few months ago, after they found irregularities in the deal. Dey facilitated the scam by endorsing the forged documents, the DC (DD) said.