597. Embezzlement

"The situation has become so bad. What are you going to do?" Parimala asked her husband Paranthaman..

Paranthaman did not reply.

The business he had been running for the past five years, was running into problems, during the past few months. 

Mahesh, who as the Manager of the firm, was looking after the business, suddenly quit his job, citing his family problems as the reason.

After Mahesh's departure, Paranthaman, who had entrusted the day-to-day running of the business to Mahesh and concentrated on expanding his business, was forced to look after the day-to-day functioning of the business. 

Within a few days of taking over the routine management of the business, Paranthaman discovered a shocking fact.

Taking advantage of the bulk of the transactions in the business being on cash, Mahesh had misappropriated a substantial amount of money, through falsification of records.

Cash payments received from some of the customers of the firm were not recorded. When Paranthaman reminded the customers about the amounts due from them, they told him that they had made the payment already.

Some customers took offense at being treated as defaulters, by being reminded of the payments due from them, while they had made the payment already. 

While Paranthaman was able to pacify some customers, by telling them about the fraud committed by the firm's Manager and apologizing to them, a few customers abruptly terminated their business relationship with Paranthaman's firm, saying that they didn't want to do business with his firm, after the trust had been breached.

Some people, who had supplied goods to the firm, reminded of the payments due to them, while Mahesh had recorded in the books that payments had been made to them already.

There was misappropriation under various heads of expenses too. 

It was recorded that cash advances had been made to some workers, by way of short term loans. But, the workers concerned denied taking such loans.

Paranthaman's efforts to contact Mahesh were not successful. Mahesh had moved from his earlier address. It was clear that Mahesh had executed his fraud, after careful planning, taking all precautions to ensue that his whereabouts couldn't be traced.

"Can you not file a complaint with the police?" asked Parimala.

"Most of the transactions being on cash, I won't be able to prove anything against Mahesh. Even if the police, acting on my complaint, were to trace and arrest Mahesh, he would be released soon. I won't be able to establish his fraud in a court of law. I won't be able to recover even one rupee from him. I will only end up wasting my time and spending a lot of money in the process. It will be like throwing good money after bad money" said Paranthaman.

"But I find that you have been writing a lot. I thought you were writing down the details of his fraud, for filing a case against him!"

"What is the point of writing the details? The money has gone. But, I have realized that the reason for Mahesh's ability to commit such a fraud is the absence of a well-designed system for running my firm. I have to employ another person in place of Mahesh and continue to run my business. Then only I can focus on building up my business, by identifying areas of growth and expanding my business in those areas. But, I have to ensure that such frauds could never be committed by any other person in future. For this, I have to create well-structured systems and procedures for running the business. I am thinking about various measures I have to implement to create such a fool-proof system and writing down my ideas. Very soon, I will complete the process and  bring out a comprehensive blueprint, for creating and implementing a good system of controls for running my firm" said Paranthaman.

Thirukkural
Section 2

Materialism

Chapter 61

Possessing Zeal

Verse 597 (in Tamil):

sidhaividaththu olgAr uravOr pudhaiyam piR
pattuppAdu UnRum kaLiRu.

Meaning:

The zealous won’t flinch in the face of setbacks;

the elephant, even if buried under a barrage of arrows, never relents.. 

(This is the English version of the Tamil story 'mahEsh seydha mOsadi' by the same author.) 

Verse 598 (Soon)
Verse 596