200 Arrested, Rs 174 Crore Disproportionate Assets Unearthed By Odisha Vigilance In 2022

Bhubaneswar: Odisha Vigilance has registered 285 cases against 554 persons, unearthed disproportionate assets worth Rs 174 crore and achieved highest cash seizures in its history with top four recoveries amounting to Rs 7 crore during 2022.

The anti-corruption agency registered cases against 60 Class-I officers, 53 Class-II officers, 227 Class-III employees, 7 Class-IV employees, 38 other public servants and 159 private persons during the year.

The 285 cases included 84 disproportionate assets (DA) cases, 118 trap cases and rest other corruption cases. Vigilance detected and registered the highest number of DA cases in the country last year and this year too it is hopeful of a similar performance.

DA cases were were registered against 91 public servants and 56 private persons. The total disproportionate assets in all the 84 cases stood at Rs 174.83 crore. 32 DA cases were registered against Class-I officers and 27 against Class-II officers, a Vigilance statement said.

The top 4 cash seizures in DA searches in the history of the state Vigilance happened in 2022 with Rs 7.01 crore seizure.

During the year, 200 persons were arrested. They included 37 Class-I officers, 39 Class-II officers, 105 Class-III employees, 4 Class-IV employee, 5 other public servants and 10 private persons.

Those arrested include 47 engineers of different departments, 31 revenue officials, 20 police officers, 13 forest officials, 12 doctors and 7 ICDS functionaries.

In the 118 trap cases,  129 persons, including 126 government officers, were nabbed red-handed demanding and accepting bribe worth Rs 36.94 lakh. It recorded seizure of four top bribe amounts, the highest being Rs 10 lakh, in the year.

As many as 898 bank accounts of corrupt public servants were frozen by the Vigilance. crypto assets were also unearthed and frozen.

During 2022, investigations were completed in 347 cases at a disposal rate of 122% of registration. This is the highest percentage of disposal in a decade.

Investigations in all trap cases of 2021 and earlier and over 60% trap cases of 2022 completed. A total of 91 convictions were made 2022.