Manager booked for siphoning off ₹1.22 cr from edtech firm

“The company has reasons to believe that the accused was not doing all of this by himself. We are conducting further investigation to find the accomplices of the accused,” said a police officer

MUMBAI: The MIDC police in Andheri on Tuesday booked the purchase manager of Leadership Boulevard, the startup behind edutech platform LEAD School, for allegedly siphoning off ₹1.22 crore from the firm since 2018.

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According to the complaint filed by a company representative, the accused Sachin Shinde works as senior manager, purchase with Leadership Boulevard since October 2018, supervising the purchase of gadgets and books used to digitise schools in smaller cities and villages.

In early 2023, Saransh Tyagi, the firm’s vice president of supply chain management grew suspicious about the working of the purchase department after he found that Shinde had submitted inflated bills to avail his travel allowance. Upon enquiry, he found a big difference in the market price of items purchased by the company and the bills submitted for the same, and intimated the company’s directors, he told the police.

The company then engaged Deloitte Touche Tomatsu for a financial audit of all purchases, which showed that Shinde had quoted higher rates in purchase orders than the amount paid to companies he was buying from and pocketed the difference. The audit of bills found on Shinde’s official laptop showed he had siphoned off ₹1.22 crore from the company.

“He routed the money into the accounts of his wife Nisha and friend Yogesh Kabadi. Having been in the industry for long, he had good relations with all suppliers who also helped him,” Tyagi told the police.

The auditors, however, told the company that many files had been deleted from Shinde’s laptop, and the actual amount siphoned off by him could be much higher. They also found documents indicating he had bought flats in Kanjurmarg and Dombivali while working with the company, making payments from the accounts of his wife, mother-in-law Vijaya Hande and Kabadi.

An official from MIDC police said that Shinde was booked under sections 120 B (criminal conspiracy), 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (Cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the Indian Penal Code.

“The company has reasons to believe that the accused was not doing all of this by himself. We are conducting further investigation to find the accomplices of the accused,” said a police officer.