Bhopal, The Madhya Pradesh EOW has unearthed an alleged ₹ 10.99-crore procurement fraud involving fake bidding on the government e-marketplace to supply old computers as new and other substandard devices to a state department, officials said on Thursday.
The companies used the same mobile number registered under a common GST account, the same email ID and address. The firms supplied old computers as new ones in some procurements. In one case, computers installed on July 22, 2024 were allegedly shown as new equipment in a tender floated on September 23, 2024, the EOW said in a release. It was also found that a UPS carrying a printed price of ₹ 6,086 was allegedly procured by the department for ₹ 11,247, despite the GeM price being ₹ 3,754, the EOW said.
A probe by the Economic Offences Wing has found that four firms were allegedly controlled or linked to the same person and participated in GeM tenders to create the impression that they were competitors in the bidding, he said. They participated together in tenders and submitted manufacturer authorisation letters to qualify for the bids, Jain said on the modus operandi of the fraud. One of the firms submitted a fake authorisation letter purportedly issued by a multinational computer manufacturing company to participate in the tender, Jain said. A manufacturer also informed the agency that the UPS model mentioned in the procurement was not supplied under the tender, according to the probe.
