In R824cr money siphoning scam, EOW finds other bogus companies had housewives and ex-employees as directors who drew R15,000 as salary
A day after dna reported how the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) had arrested the directors of Asthavinayak Cine Vision, the shell company allegedly involved in a Rs824 crore scam, this paper has learnt that the firm made its godown keeper, ex-employees and two housewives directors of five bogus companies floated to siphon off the money.
Mumbai crime branch's EOW on Thursday arrested two independent directors and two chartered accountants in connection with the case.
According to EOW, there were in all seven directors in the five shell companies. Of these, one has been identified as Rasees Desai, godown keeper for the company. Other are Pranav Patel, ex-employee of the company, Denise Salarka, employed as marketing manager with Asthavinayak, and two housewives from Rajkot. Two others have been shown as accused wanted in the case.
"Main accused Dhilin Mehta's father was a close friend of the arrested accused Nishant Mahindar. When they wanted to float the bogus companies and needed people as directors, it was Mahindar who helped get them," said an EOW officer.
He added, "Out of the seven directors, two are housewives from Rajkot whoa re related to Mahindar, one is a godown keeper, one an ex-employee, and one a marketing manager with Ashtavinayak Cine Vision."
During the probe, it was revealed that all the seven directors received around Rs15,000 a month to be director of the company. "Transactions worth crores of rupees were carried out though the account created in the name of the 'directors' of the fake company and they had no clue about any of it," said an officer privy to the investigation.
He added, "We believe the 'directors' were not even aware of what was happening. We are seeking opinion on making them witnesses in the case."
Throwing light on the scam, additional commissioner of police (EOW) Rajvardhan Sinha said, "We are tracking where the entire money actually went. Our priority at this point, apart from the investigation, is to block the money."
Sleuths, however, haven't been able to trace the money trail. "There are some transactions that are shown in the account books but there seems to be no trace of the actual transactions."
Meanwhile, Hetal Naren Thakur, Ashok Ladani, Nilesh Indravardhan Dharia and Kaushik Hasmukhlal Gandhi, who were arrested on Thursday, were produced before court and remanded in police custody till March 17.
The scam came to light after the company defaulted on a payment of Rs41 cr to a stakeholder, Tejpal Shah, in 2007 for some production work he had done for the firm. Shah then approached the HC, and the ensuing development cracked the fraud wide open.
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