Rs 21-crore fraud sparks scrutiny at EPFO offices | Economic Times

Following a Rs 21-crore EPFO fraud, the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation has decided to scrutinize all transactions - especially recent ones, including those of the previous financial year - at all field offices across the country.The decision was taken following an internal audit in August at the EPFO office in Mumbai which exposed the fraud, Mint reported.Details from an ongoing internal investigation claimed that a 37-year-old clerk at EPFO’s Kandivali office used as many as 817 bank accounts, mostly of migrant workers, to fraudulently claim PF amounting to Rs 21.5 crore on their behalf. The retirement fund manager suspended six employees in Mumbai's Kandivali office.According the the Mint report, the scrutiny will mainly include Covid-19 withdrawals, which allowed employees to withdraw their corpus to deal with the large-scale job and income loss during the pandemic.The records of the suspended employees are being scrutinized and authorities are tracking their employment history at different offices as well, Mint quoted a government official as saying.During FY21, at least 7.63 million salaried workers dipped into their retirement corpus to deal with the fallout from Covid-19, according to official data.As on 31 May, EPF subscribers had withdrawn almost Rs 18,700 crore.