Chennai
As per the FIR registered by CBI’s Bank Securities and Fraud Cell, Bengaluru, the jewellery chain cheated State Bank of India of Rs 278.31 crore, Union Bank of India of Rs 56.84 crore and HDFC Bank of Rs 44.60 crore. The total loss to the banks due to the fraud is pegged at Rs 379.75 crore, including the interests, as on March 1, this year.
The CBI has cited N Ranganath Gupta, promoter and managing director of NSJPL, and directors N Prasanna Kumar, and Prapanna Kumar, along with Sohun CJ, a chartered accountant as accused in the FIR, along with unknown public servants. On Saturday, the sleuths had conducted searches at the houses of the senior executives of the company.
The actions of the company and promoters amount to falsification of accounts, criminal breach of trust and cheating with intention to cause a wrongful loss, CBI noted.
The CBI has filed the case under various sections of the IPC for criminal conspiracy, breach of trust, forgery, using forged documents as genuine and criminal misconduct by public servants, besides provisions of Prevention of Corruption Act. The case was booked based on a complaint from SBI.
CBI had also noted that economic offence wing of TN police has already registered a case against the company based on complaints from customers, who invested in the deposit schemes.
The sign of sickness was noticed when the company delayed payment of interest to all the banks in the consortium on April 2017.
Following this, an inspection showed low level of activities in the showrooms as well as stocks. When requested, the company refused to cooperate for physical verification of stocks. Only after intervention of the senior bank officials, the management agreed for physical verification of stocks. Sudden depletion of stock was noticed during the audit.
There was huge gap between the stock on March 31, 2017 and July, 19, 2017. The stock on March 31, 2017 was shown worth Rs 495 crore and on July 19, during the physical verification, it was found that the stock was worth only Rs 18 crore. Only after funding the discrepancies in stock the bank decoded to go ahead with legal action against the company.
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