5 held by ED for stock market fraud

New Delhi, March 30 (IANS) The Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday said that they have arrested five persons in connection with a PMLA case related to stock market fraud, in which the accused generated Rs 200 crore as proceeds of crime.

A senior ED official said that the accused were identified as Suresh Venkatachari, Promoter and President of Securekloud Technologies Ltd (STL), R.S. Ramani, Promoter and former CFO of Securekloud, Anupam Gupta, Promoter and Managing Director of Pro Fin Capital Services Ltd, Hemal Mehta, a sharebroker, and Rohit Arora, a loan broker.

They were arrested under Section 19 of Prevention of Money Laundering Act on March 24.

A case was booked under the PMLA on the basis of the FIR registered by CCB, Chennai as per which some sharebrokers and financial service provider companies cheated Venkatachari by selling shares pledged by him to order to obtain loans.

The complainant stated that the sharebrokers who have provided loan forged the signatures on delivery instruction slips and sold the shares in off-market.

"PMLA investigation revealed that the directors and beneficial owners of these share brokerage and financial services companies have transferred the shares worth Rs 160 crore in off-market and subsequently sold the same. The investigation also revealed that the complaint lodged by the promoter of STL was misleading as Venkatachari and Ramani are involved in larger conspiracy of cheating general public by way of inflating books of the company, diverting funds of the company to the unrelated business activities of companies having stakes of the CFO and the CEO of STL. To reap the fruits of crime, Ramani sold the shares worth Rs 110 crore in open market and Venkatachari obtained loan of Rs 40 crore from share brokers," the official said.

The ED said that Gupta and Mehta were part of criminal conspiracy and indulged in insider trading activity and tried to manipulate the share price of 8k Miles (now Securekloud Technologies Ltd). Gupta sold shares of Venkatachari and provided Rs 14 crore to him, entered into illegal trading activity of 8k Miles shares and ultimately passed of the shares to general public. Mehta was given money in the form of shares for doing the said work for Venkatachari.

"Arora facilitated all these transactions knowing fully well that it is an illegal activity. All the arrested accused generated proceeds of crime of more than Rs 200 crore," the official said.

The accused were produced before the Special Court for PMLA, Chennai and have been sent to judicial custody till April 6.

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