In what is shaping up as the biggest banking fraud in the history of the Chandigarh tricity, a sprawling criminal network of bank officials, government employees, shell company operators, real estate businessmen and financiers has allegedly siphoned off nearly Rs 1,000 crore from public funds maintained across Chandigarh, Panchkula and Haryana, money that was meant for civic infrastructure, smart city projects, school welfare and government administration, directly impacting lakhs of residents of the region.Two central agencies, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Directorate of Enforcement (ED), are now pursuing parallel investigations across multiple cases, all linked by a common thread: government funds held in private bank accounts, compromised by insiders, and systematically looted through forged documents, shell firms and layered cash trails.The scale: How much was looted and from whereThe fraud, as it has unravelled so far, spans at least four distinct but interconnected cases:The largest strand involves over Rs 550 crore embezzled from multiple Haryana government department accounts maintained with IDFC First Bank. Alongside this, Rs 117 crore was siphoned from Chandigarh Smart City Limited (CSCL) and Municipal Corporation Chandigarh (MCC) accounts, and Rs 83 crore from the CREST (Chandigarh Road and Infrastructure Development Corporation) accounts, both routed through the same IDFC First Bank branch in Sector 32, Chandigarh. In a separate but related case, Rs 145 crore belonging to Municipal Corporation Panchkula was embezzled through Kotak Mahindra Bank. Together, the confirmed fraud figure approaches Rs 1,000 crore of public money.The IDFC first bank fraud: what happened and howAt the heart of the Chandigarh-Haryana IDFC First Bank fraud was a criminal nexus operating from inside the bank’s Sector 32 branch. Former branch manager Ribhav Rishi and ex-bank official Abhay Kumar allegedly exploited their positions to divert funds from government accounts directly into intermediary shell entities they had floated using the names of family members and personal staff.Rishi created M/s Capco Fintech Services and M/s R S Traders, registered in the names of his personal assistant and driver respectively. Kumar floated M/s Swastik Desh Projects in the names of his wife and brother-in-law. A fourth entity, M/s SRR Planning Gurus Pvt Ltd, also received diverted government funds. These shell firms received the embezzled money directly from government department accounts, providing the first layer of concealment.The funds were then subjected to further layering through multiple bank accounts linked to the accused and their associates. In a particularly audacious twist, investigators found that hundreds of crores were transferred from these shell entities to jewellers across the region, who handed back equivalent amounts in cash, effectively converting traceable digital transactions into untraceable currency. Rishi and his associates then allegedly distributed this cash to a network of government officials and private businessmen.One of those businessmen was real estate developer Vikram Wadhwa, arrested by the ED on May 29. Investigators have established that Wadhwa received proceeds of crime exceeding Rs 70 crore directly into his personal bank account, in addition to receiving a substantial share of the cash generated from the jeweller pipeline. He further invested these proceeds in entities associated with him and acquired multiple immovable properties, all allegedly financed from siphoned public funds.In the Chandigarh strand of the case, investigators found that forged bank statements and fictitious fixed deposit receipts were created to conceal the diversion of funds from CSCL, MCC and CREST accounts. Punjab Governor and UT Administrator Gulab Chand Kataria had recommended a CBI probe into both the CSCL-MCC fraud and the CREST scam after the scale of the alleged embezzlement became apparent.The Kotak Mahindra Bank fraud: A parallel playbookAcross the Ghaggar, a near-identical playbook was being executed against Municipal Corporation Panchkula’s accounts held with Kotak Mahindra Bank. The ED arrested former Deputy Vice-President of Kotak Mahindra Bank, Pushpinder Singh, on Jattvibeday, describing him as the mastermind of the Rs 145-crore fraud.According to investigators, Singh, then a senior bank official, acted in collusion with Dileep Kumar Raghav, the bank’s Customer Relationship Manager, and Vikas Kaushik, the then Senior Accounts Officer of MC Panchkula, to open two unauthorised bank accounts in the name of the municipal corporation using forged authorisation documents. Funds lying in the corporation’s genuine accounts were then transferred into these fictitious accounts through fake fund migration letters purportedly issued on behalf of the civic body.Once the money reached the fake MC Panchkula accounts, Singh allegedly directed its onward transfer to a network of financiers, Rajat Dahra, Swati Tomar, Kapil Kumar and Vinod Kumar, who were operating under his direct control. Investigators found that the bank accounts of Dahra and Tomar, through which a bulk of the funds was channelled, were also under Singh’s operational control.In a pattern mirroring the IDFC Bank case, the funds received by these financiers were subsequently routed back to Singh himself and his wife Preeti Thakur. Money was also transferred to real estate firms and other private individuals on Singh’s instructions. The Special PMLA Court in Panchkula has remanded Singh to nine days’ ED custody till June 9.Who has been arrested so farThe arrests across both cases now include: Ribhav Rishi and Abhay Kumar, arrested by the ED on May 11 in the IDFC Bank case and currently in judicial custody after 11 days of ED remand; Vikram Wadhwa, arrested on May 29 in the same case and currently in four-day ED custody; and Pushpinder Singh, arrested on June 1 in the Kotak Mahindra Bank-MC Panchkula case and remanded to nine-day ED custody. Multiple bank officials, shell company operators and government employees have also been arrested across the Chandigarh and Haryana wings of the investigation by the CBI and state police agencies.Why it matters to tricity residentsThe funds looted across these cases were not abstract government balances. The CSCL and MCC money was earmarked for smart city infrastructure and civic development in Chandigarh. The CREST funds were meant for road and infrastructure projects. The Panchkula MC money was civic body revenue intended for municipal services. The Haryana government funds were drawn from multiple state departments serving residents across the region. Every rupee siphoned off is a rupee subtracted from public services, infrastructure and welfare that lakhs of Tricity residents depend on.What nextBoth the CBI and ED are pursuing live, expanding investigations. The ED has explicitly stated that efforts are ongoing to trace the complete money trail, identify remaining beneficiaries and attach properties acquired from the proceeds of crime across both the IDFC and Kotak Mahindra Bank cases. Investigators have signalled that the network of beneficiaries, spanning government officials, businessmen, financiers and real estate entities, is wider than the arrests made so far.The possible involvement of government officials at various levels in both Chandigarh and Haryana remains a critical line of inquiry, as does the suspected movement of funds beyond the region. Further arrests, property attachments and charge-sheet filings are expected in the coming weeks as both agencies work to establish the full contours of what is now confirmed as the largest public money fraud in the Tricity’s recorded history.