THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Beverages Corporation will submit a report to the government after clarifying more about the irregularities found in the vigilance lightning inspection of foreign liquor retail outlets. Financial fraud was found in 70 of the 78 shops inspected. Financial irregularity is on account of the loss caused by broken bottles. The losses in the calculations are many times what was allowed.

The district audit team of the corporation conducts inspections twice a month but does not find any major lapses. A team from the warehouses (other warehouse team) also conducts inspections every month. Vigilance found issues that were not seen then. Even the less busy shops have a daily income of not less than 8 lakhs. The breakage (bottles broken) loss allowed by Bevco is 0.5 percent per one lakh. A shop with a sale of two and a half crores in a month will get about one and a half lakh in this item. Most brands now come in plastic bottles so breakage losses are less.

Empty boxes

There is also an irregularity in selling empty paper boxes in which liquor is brought. There is an accurate count of the cases arriving at each shop. As some of the boxes will go bad, a discount of 23 per cent on the quantity will be paid to Bevco when sold. Actually, there won't be losses in that scale.

Wrapping paper in name only

Rs 5000 per month is allotted to each shop for miscellaneous expenses. This is for purposes like drinking water and paper for wrapping alcohol bottles. A maximum 5 kg of paper in a day is enough at shops that sell liquor worth Rs 10 lakh. Even though it appears that paper is being bought, many shops do not have paper.