Bengaluru: Energy dept busts 'fake' kickback plaint

A Bengaluru-based software company inadvertently got involved in the raging ‘40 per cent commission’ row after a top executive’s signature and other credentials were found on a letter claiming that huge kickbacks were paid to officials in the energy department headed by minister V Sunil Kumar.

The company Zygox Infotech Pvt Ltd, which provides billing and other IT services to state-run electricity companies, has filed a police complaint against the “mischief.”

This came to light when the letter in question came to the notice of the managing director of the Mangalore Electricity Supply Company (Mescom).

The letter dated January 16 had the Zygox Infotech logo, signature of managing director Ravishankar T and the company’s seal. The letter claimed that Rs 25,000 was paid to a Mescom executive engineer, Rs 30 lakh to Mescom board of directors and Rs 1 crore to ministers and MLA “for project extension.”

“We have received anonymous emails from an imposter posing as our employee in the HR Department...that we have paid some money to Mescom officers and others,” Ravishankar stated in his complaint to the cyber crime police on
January 17.

Apparently, a fake email address - [e-mail] - was created along with company letterheads. “We have not paid a single rupee to any officer and there was no demand from any officials,” Ravishankar stated, adding that this was a “mischief to tarnish image of our company.”

According to Energy Minister Sunil Kumar, this was the third instance of a “fake” complaint against his department. “In the previous two cases, the address on the letterhead was fake,” he said. “This is being done to bring bad repute to the government. There must be a group that’s doing this. Because we’re clean, we’re giving complaints. Otherwise, I guess we’d have kept quiet,” he said.

The BJP government has been accused of corruption, especially after the Karnataka State Contractors Association lodged a complaint with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in July 2021 that they are forced to pay cuts as high as 40 per cent to officials, MLAs and ministers.