Delhi employee falsely keeps wife on payroll for 10 years, steals ₹4.2 crore from company

The man has been accused of transferring ₹3.6 crore to his wife's account and inflate his own salary, causing a total loss of ₹4.2 crore to the company.

An employee of a private recruitment company is under investigation for fraudulently adding his unemployed wife to the company's payroll for 10 years, causing the firm loss worth crores of rupees. An FIR was lodged with the police last week after an internal inquiry conducted by the Delhi-based company revealed the alleged fraud.

The accused was among the only three people at the firm to have access to the payroll and reimbursement data.

The firm, identified as ManpowerGroup Service Private Limited became aware of its records being manipulated in December last year. According to the complaint, Radhaballav Nath, an employee working with them since 2008, is accused of devising a plan to generate income sources for his wife using the company's resources. Nath held the position of manager (finance) in the company at the time of the alleged crime.

The accused was among the only three people at the firm to have access to the payroll and reimbursement data. His responsibilities included managing data concerning new employees, employee attendance, and other related tasks, which he would then forward to the payroll vendor to prepare the monthly pay register.

'Would manipulate record'

Once the vendor would send back the register to Nath, it would be pushed for an approval from the director (human resources), the chief human resource officer (CHRO), andthe other two employees tasked with the duty. Once approved, Nath's next task was to forward the final list to the bank for payment processing. However, the company has alleged that he would manipulate the list before sending it to the bank.

"The modus operandi adopted by Mr Radhaballav Nath was that after receiving the approved Excel file containing the payroll data from the office of the CHRO, Mr Radhaballav Nath used to insert an additional row having his wife's name, Sasmita Raul @ Sasmita Nath, in the said excel sheet containing the payroll data," the company's complaint, which was converted into an FIR, said.

It also alleged that he used to add the salary amount in his wife's name and tampered with his own salary figure. The inquiry revealed that he used to manipulate the payroll file on the bank's portal using the computer system of another employee. After uploading the file, he used to delete it from the system.

It further added that on being confronted with documents, Nath admitted to having illegally transferred ₹3.6 crore to his wife's account and inflated his own salary, causing a total loss of ₹4.2 crore to the company.

(With ANI, PTI inputs)