Settlement of final dues as concerned incharge misplaced a vendor bill

I worked in one MNC company as an accountant and i quit 4 months back, still i didnot receive my settlement, which is held up by company local management at state level, reason behind this is one vendor has submitted bill for his services to company 4 years back to the concerned incharge who misplaced the bill (who also resigned 2 years back), after that vendor asked for my help as he didnot receive money, i told him will try to help in that matter and found that the bill was not booked and informed the same to the vendor, now vendor following with State management for the payment, now the state management is asking me to settle this issue as i was the person responsible as accountant during that time. I told the management i never seen the bill nor received the bill from the vendor. Vendor also agrees for that statement..
Now request suggestion how to get my final settlement amount from the company. Shall i escalate the matter to HO and CMD?
Regards,
Selvam P

Dear Selvam,
Yes, it is high time for you to escalate the matter to HO. You could have waited for three months and then itself you could have approached the higher authorities. In your application state the facts in chronological order.
The company has provided you the clearance. Clearance from the company shows that there are no dues with you. If any issue emerges after your exit, then current managers or authorities concerned should be competent to handle or solve the issue. It appears that someone at the higher authority does not want to solve the issue as it is considered as burden by him/her. Second interpretation of the incident is the lack of empowerment. Why the senior authorities are wary to solve the problem in their summary power?
General comments: - Four months after the exit of the employee, FnF is not cleared and this happens in MNC! I have often held in this forum that the gloss of MNC is always spurious. If the vendor submitted the bill four years ago and if it was misplaced then why vendor was not asked to provide the duplicate bill? Why this case lingered for such a long time? Persons working in these very MNCs have penchant to deride Indian companies as lala companies yet their work practices are no different!
Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar

I find it very strange that a state level management will withhold the f&f of an accountant because a 4 year old bill of a vendor was not paid. The logical process would be to ask the vendor for the bill copy, book the same and pay the vendor. That has to be done by the existing accountant and not the one who is no longer working with the company. I can not accept any person in the management would be stupid enough to gild someone's settlement for that reason.
So what is the actual issue here ? There a]must be some other problem or incident that you have not informed us about.
When you followed up, what was the reason given ?