Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala government is set to recover the payment made to multinational consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) on account of the salary and perks drawn by Swapna Suresh, a key accused in the gold smuggling case. She had deceived authorities in the Kerala government as well as private recruitment agencies to land a plum job in the Space Park.
The Finance (Inspection Wing-Technical) Department has recommended that Rs 16.15 lakh, minus GST, paid to the accused as salary and other perks should be recovered from PricewaterhouseCoopers which had employed her in the Space Park, an undertaking of the Kerala government.
If the agency fails to repay the amount then the money should be recovered in three equal portions from three officials including chief minister's former principal secretary M Sivasankar.
Jaishankar Prasad, MD of Kerala State IT Infrastructure Limited, and Santosh Kurup, Space Park special officer, are the other two officials.
Investigations revealed that the three played a key role in endorsing Swapna's candidature and her appointment at the Space Park.
The report submitted by the Department was seen by the Chief Minister and forwarded to the IT secretary. However, no action has been taken on the recommendation yet. Instead in a strange move the file has been forwarded to the accused Jaishankar Prasad for further action!
As reported earlier Swapna Suresh was given a job in the Space Park project at a monthly expense of Rs 3.18 lakh. PricewaterhouseCoopers had hired Swapna through a recruiting agency named Vision Technology and Staffing Solutions.
PwC had placed Swapna in Space Park in October 2019.
She had even submitted a B.Com degree certificate purportedly issued by the Dr Baba Saheb Ambedkar Technological University in Lonere, Maharashtrathrough this agency. This certificate was later found to be fake.
