Dismissed IAS officer Vinod kumar has been sentenced to three year rigorous imprisonment in corruption related case.
Vinod Kumar, a 1989 batch IAS of Odisha cadre, faces 27 corruption cases while being convicted in seven. Had Vinod been not dismissed, he would have retired this month after completing 34 years of service.
Kumar, who was dismissed in February 2022, has been convicted of disbursing housing loan fraudulently to a real estate company in a case registered in 2012.
According to vigilance report, Kumar, then managing director of Odisha Rural Housing Development Corporation (ORHDC), had fraudulently sanctioned a housing loan in favour of a real estate company without following the standard procedure.
Kumar, a native of Bihar, is a graduate in mechanical engineering from BHU. He had been district collector of couple of districts in his service. However, he had never been acknowledged as an efficient officer. He was first suspended in 2006 as per the DoPT service record.
As per government statement, in the aftermath of the 1999 super cyclone, Kumar approved loans amounting to ₹ 33.34 crore to fake private firms and individuals without adhering to prescribed guidelines.
Kumar was convicted of criminal conspiracy with some government officials and a realtor of Puri to whom he has sanctioned ₹ 46.9 lakh in guise of 19 individual loans during 2000-01 without proper scrutiny, in the second case, he conspired with a property dealer to whom he sanctioned ₹ 41.26 lakh on pretext of providing loans to 12 individuals. There are other such cases also where loans were given to fake individuals to siphon of the money.
Apart from Kumar, the court convicted four other former officers of ORHDC. They were identified as ex-company secretary Swasti Ranjan Mohapatra, former accounts officer Pradeep Kumar Rout, former junior loan officer Satyaprakash Behera and former assistant system analyst Jnanendra Swain, a vigilance officer said.
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