The Great LTC Racket

The great LTC racket: CBI called in to investigate fake tickets
First Post 

In order to not lose out on their annual Leave Travel Concession it turns out several government employees may have been part of a racket that involved printing fake Air India tickets and boarding passes. 

The racket, involving central government and public sector employees, as well as travel agents, has been unearthed and its scope is still not known. The Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) has asked the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to investigate. 

The agents, in connivance with the passengers, would first book an Air India ticket to a popular holiday destination. The passengers would finally travel on cheaper flights. 

Reuters According to the Times of India, the CVC on 16 August asked the CBI to carry out a criminal investigation on the case, where large sums are said to have been siphoned from the government by producing fake Air India tickets and boarding passes. Air India is the only airline that government and PSU employees are allowed to use to claim LTC. 

A sizeable number of such employees of the rank of under secretary and above are said to have claimed travel with their family, the report said. The racket was first busted in March by the Kolkata Police who detained a passenger at Kolkata airport carrying 600 blank Air India boarding passes, as he was about to board a Spice Jet flight to the Andamans. On being interrogated, he claimed that he was to deliver it to someone in the Andamans, where they would be filled with fictitious details of flights. 

Air India’s vigilance division’s investigations confirmed that this was a fairly widespread practice among government employees to manipulate LTC by submitting forged boarding pass and tickets, and hugely inflating fares. 

According to a TOI report in March, the airline suspected a modus operandi in which blank boarding passes, like those in possession of Verma, were used by unauthorised agents to generate fake travel records for government employees eligible for Leave Travel Concession (LTC) facility. 

The agents, in connivance with the passengers, would first book an Air India ticket to a popular holiday destination, generate a blank boarding pass to be submitted under the LTC scheme (for the passenger to claim reimbursement from the government), cancel the booking and then get a ticket from another airline to the same destination, airline sources told TOI. 

The TOI report also said: It appears that many officials submit forged boarding passes and e-tickets of travel between Delhi and Thiruvananthapuram, while they are actually travelling to Colombo or Singapore. In other words, on the basis of their LTC claims, employees are undertaking foreign trips, which this facility doesn’t allow.

http://www.firstpost.com/economy/the-great-ltc-racket-cbi-called-in-to-investigate-fake-tickets-1052479.html

New Delhi: A widespread racket in fake LTC claims allegedly made by central government and public sector employees for travel on state-run Air India is being probed by CBI after authorities detected few such cases.

Lakhs of rupees are said to have been wrung out of the government through the fraudulent Leave Travel Concession(LTC) claims in which some travel agents were also involved. 

The incident came to light after the vigilance department of Air India(AI) was alerted about the arrest of a man in March this year at the Kolkata airport with 600 blank boarding passes of the airline in his possession.

Smelling a rat and an alleged criminal nexus between air travel agents and government employees, Air India got in touch with the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) which has now asked the CBI to look into the matter.

"We have received the reference from CVC yesterday and the examination is in process," a CBI spokesperson said today.

One of the cases to be probed is the LTC facility availed on December 13, 2012 when seven tickets of 'Executive Class' were purchased for travel on the Delhi-Kolkata-Port Blair route and back.

The AI in March got a letter from the Rajya Sabha Secretariat asking the airline to conduct an inquiry into this case after it got LTC claims from seven individuals in this regard.

The inquiry, according to sources, found that the serial numbers on the boarding passes did not match the AI inventory and were fake. The cost of each ticket, which was claimed by the seven people, was stated to about Rs 1,35,610.

After this episode, Air India then scanned all LTC claims made by various ministries and departments and stumbled upon several fake claims.

The airline suspects a modus operandi in which the blank boarding passes could have been used by unauthorised agents to generate fake travel records for government employees eligible for LTC facility extended by the central government.

It is suspected that these agents, in connivance with the passengers, would initially book an Air India ticket to a popular holiday destination and then cancel it and get a ticket from another airline to the same destination, the sources said.

Later, the agent would generate the blank boarding pass as a substitute for the LTC scheme for the passenger to claim reimbursement from the government, thereby resulting in a loss to the exchequer, they said.

While perpetuating this fraud, the passenger saves a sizeable amount and the agent gets his commission.