Police are investigating a fraud at a state-run bank branch at Nawala, where an employee had allegedly swindled more than Rs. 2.2 million by under-stating the weight of pawned gold jewellery.

The scam came to light, when on a complaint by the manager, an audit check revealed that the gold jewellery pawned by customers had been under-weighed. Instances of falsification of invoices had also emerged. In addition, the entries of the National Identity Cards linked to the transactions were found to be bogus, police said.

Police filed a ‘B’ report in this connection before Colombo Chief Magistrate Nishantha Hapuarachichi last week. The suspect is absconding.

Police told court that amongst the 21 sealed packets of pawned jewellery only three contained genuine gold items.