“Fraud,
Forgery and Financial Irregularities in Odisha state Cooperative Bank,
Bhubaneswar”
-An Extract
from Statutory Inspection
Report submitted by NABARD-
(Exposed under RTI on 27.4.19 from the PIO, office of
Registrar of Cooperative Societies, Odisha)
1. Introduction
OSCB scam is not
new for the people as well as RTI Activists
of Odisha who are spearheading
campaign for effective implementation of RTI and
to fight out corruption in the state. Earlier, huge
corruption and irregularities in
Odisha State Cooperative Bank ,
Bhubaneswar has been exposed under RTI
several times and put in public domain
for knowledge of the public at large. The expose of corruption and
misappropriation of fund started with
revelation of statutory audit Report of
Odisha State Cooperative Bank
presented by Auditor General,
Cooperative Societies, Odisha on 30.9.2011. Armed with this
Report and information obtained under RTI , many RTI Activists like Sri Ashok Nanda, Sudhir Mohanty,
Biswajit Mohanty have filed series
of complaints starting from to
Chief Minister to State Vigilance. But astonishingly, no inquiry has been
conducted since 5 years. Rather
it has been suppressed and
corrupt officers being
awarded with promotion time and
again to suppress scams. ( For details ,
visit link https://odishasoochana.blogspot.com/2018/08/inquiry-into-oscb-scam-worth-rs500.html.)
Recently, NABARD, Regional
Office, Bhubaneswar has presented its
statutory inspection report of the Odisha State Cooperative Bank Ltd. to State
Government which was conducted from 14th February to 6th
March,19 with reference to its financial position as on 31st March 2018 under
Section 35(6) of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949 ( As Applicable to Cooperative Societies). All the
issues pointed out by NABARD
in their Inspection Report has
justified earlier allegation of RTI Activists and complaints filed
several times in this regard.
Fraud and
Forgery in Award of Contract for
computerization to VSoft Company
Pursuant to a number of complaints
received on computerization relating to CBS ( Core Banking Solution) in
OSCB, DCCBs and PACS ( Primary
Agriculture Cooperative Societies) ,
NABARD had conducted inspection about it. It was as
follows.
The Tender process
started with RFP in September
2010. The technical bids were collected
on 14 January 2011. In terms of the Special Committee Proceedings ( 10 February 2011), Technical and Commercial bids were given weightage and approved
after deliberations at 80:20 ( 80
% for Technical and 20% for commercial), which was considered to be quite robust as against industry standard at 70:30. To ensure
quality CBS. It was
suggested to refer the decision to consultants. A CBS software (
Core Banking Solution Software) demo was organized
on 8 July 2011 with participation
from 14 selected officials of the Bank. VSoft company along with two others had failed
to demonstrate as per tender documents and there were very serious shortcomings raising queries / questions on their CBS modules. Only TCS
and Polaris demonstrated
satisfactorily as per
specifications in their tender
documents. Without express
reasons, the views of the
committee was overlooked
and VSoft , on the other hand , were
handed the committee’s’
shortcomings chart in respect of the
company for improvement instead
of the bank rejecting the tender
outright on technical grounds as per Bid evaluation Criteria( at B6 of
RFP). Meanwhile , the commercial bids were opened on 30 August 2011. The Evaluation of weighted techno-commercial score was changed from
80:20 to 30:70 ( 30% Technical, 70% Commercial) resulting in VSoft becoming L1.
There was no pre-announcement of the
revised techno-commercial matrix. The drastic modification giving primacy to
price and relegating the technical
to secondary status in evaluation parameters had no basis and the consultants’ detailed
opinion / views on the subject were out
of the record except a cursory
statement in the proceedings of the special committee dated 30. August 2011. As per
technical evaluation conducted by Technical Committee on 21.7.2011,
VSoft, Polaris and TCS were awarded 146,
150 and 175 out of 200 points respectively. On the aspect of technical presentation
marks awarded were 15,16 and 18 respectively, though as per the
presentation minutes while TCS and
Polaris came out satisfactorily , VSoft
failed to convince the committee as the software was not as per the tender documents. However, for completeness
of overall solution marks awarded were
33, 37 and 42 respectively in the matrix. There was apparently inconsistency between the
Committee’s assessment and
the proceedings of the 8th July 2011 demo. At 14-member CBS Committee which treated
the software of TCS and Polaris
as “ satisfactory”. There was no convincing effort in the Technical
Committee proceedings to justify the
counter view. The marks awarded
to VSoft is , therefore a kind of window dressing.
A group of 10 members of the Management Committee (MC) had submitted dissenting note with respect to MC
RESOLUTION ON MEETING DATED
25.1.2012 bringing to fore a series of
issues on CBS implementation. But the bank had never examined or considered for redressal of their complaints , although the issues
pointed out in their dissenting
note were quite serious. Even TCS and Polaris had
also complained vide letters dated 13 September 2011 and 30 November
2011 respectively against irregularities in award of contract. Allegations were serious but no action had been taken on the complaints in question.
Questionable Advance Payments
to VSoft Company- The VSoft was provided
advances of money amounting to Rs. 1,00,00,000 on 2 July 2014 and Rs. 19,85,000
for VSAT and Rs. 13,44,000 to Trend Micro
on unknown dates ( during 2013-14
) as per the records of payment available with DIT. The advances had no other details and no one in the bank
had any knowledge as to
their final settlement. On different
dates between the period 7 April 2018 to August 2018, the bank had
paid advances of Rs. 8,69,43,913 to VSoft as advance over and above CBS contract amount and outside the agreement. The details of
payments and purpose is
not available with the vouchures and DIT is
also not aware of the most of the
purpose of payments.
Pradip Pradhan
M-9937843482
Date- 30.6.19
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