Company cheats Petroleum Ministry of Rs 7.2 crore; booked

NEW DELHI: A Mumbaibased private company has allegedly cheated a department of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas to the tune of Rs 7.2 crore by purportedly submitting a fabricated bank guarantee for a contract it had bid for, according to the FIR filed by the Delhi Police Economic Offences Wing (EOW). According to police, the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) had a project under its ministry called Discovered Small Field Policy (DSF) with the motive of extracting oil and natural gas from the un-monetized small oil gas discoveries that are available in the country.

The Ministry issued a notice inviting offers (NIO) for the development of discovered small oil, gas fields in India under-discovered small field policy for 25 contract areas. "As per the NIO, the discovered small fields were to be awarded to successful bidders by entering into a Revenue Sharing Contract (RSO) with the government," police said quoting the complaint.

One of the important terms of the NIO was a bank guarantee for work program commitment terms. The contract was awarded to a Mumbai-based company and the contractor submitted a bank guarantee purportedly issued by Allahabad Bank for an amount of Rs 7,20,00,000 in favour of the Government of India.

As per standard practice, DGH forwarded the copy of the bank guarantee to Allahabad Bank and requested to verify the genuineness of the bank guarantee, following which the department was made aware of the fabricated guarantee.