CBI arrests 3 Indian Oil officers in diesel scam

CBI arrests 3 Indian Oil officers in diesel scam
JOYDEEP RAY

AHMEDABAD, OCT 11: The CBI arrested three senior officers of Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL) on Tuesday evening for their alleged role in the multi-crore high-speed diesel scam.

Those arrested were IOCL Senior Divisional Manager at Thiruvananthapuram A. Majumder, who was earlier posted in Mumbai; M.L. Varudkar, Secretary of the IOCL Dealers' Selection Board in Bhopal; and U.N. Pai, Manager of IOCL for State Level Coordination in Ahmedabad. While Majumder was arrested from Thiruvananthapuram, Varudkar was arrested from Bhopal and Pai from Ahmedabad.

CBI sources indicated that arrests from three other petro majors -- Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd and Indo-Burma Petroleum Company Ltd -- were likely.

The high-speed diesel scam was busted by the CBI on May 25 when simultaneous raids were conducted at eight different places in Gujarat. The CBI found that large quantities of subsidised diesel allotted to industrial units, many of them fictitious, had been diverted to the open market in connivance with officers of oil companies and the Sales Tax Department of the state government.

The CBI also discovered assets disproportionate to their known sources of income, including gold and cash, from the residences of senior oil company officers.

Speaking about the involvement of arrested officers, a CBI officer said that while they were supposed to physically verify the existence of units applying for the diesel quota, they didn't do so. Instead, they ordered release of large quantities of high-speed diesel in the name of private companies which had been closed for years. ``In some cases, they signed delivery orders even when the applicant private companies did not exist,'' sources added.

On Monday, the CBI had arrested Nikhil Seth and Sanjay Majmudar, owners of private chemical factories in Vadodara. While Seth owns Maruti Chemical Industries at Savli in Vadodara, Majmudar owns Maruti Petrochem, also at Savli.