Gold finance firm under EOW scanner; gold, cars seized

CHENNAI: Sleuths from the Economics Offence Wing conducted searches at 26 premises belonging to Aarudhra Gold Trading Pvt Ltd, and its directors in Chennai and other parts of Tamil Nadu. Police decided to bring the firm under its scanner after it announced a scheme promising 30 per cent interest for Rs 1 lakh investment. The EOW has registered a case against its directors J Baskar, P Mohanbabu, Usha Vettrivel, K Harish, V Rajasekar, A Senthilkumar, B Pattabiraman S Michaelraj and others. Searches are conducted at 26 premises throughout Tamil Nadu. Baskar and Mohanbabu were arrested on Tuesday.

In the ongoing searches ledgers, registers, connected to details of deposits, hard disc of 48 computers, 6 laptops, 44 mobile phones, 60 sovereign of gold, 2 cars and huge cash of Rs.3.41 crore were seized so far. 11 bank accounts have been frozen, where the money collected in cash was deposited. Two accused were arrested.

“Prima facie it was found that Aarudhra Gold Trading Pvt. Ltd has collected money in the form of cash as deposit from the public with the false promise of return of exorbitant interest. The deposit collected from the successor depositor was used to pay the interest of the predecessor depositor as in a ponzi scheme,” a press release from EOW said.

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