India: Mukesh Modi firm's official arrested for multi-crore fraud

Mukesh Modi

Jaipur, May 25 (PTI) The Rajasthan police Saturday conducted raids at several places in the country and arrested 11 current and former office bearers of Mukesh Modi's Adarsh Credit Co-operative Society Ltd in connection with a multi-crore fraud, officials said.

The special operations group of Rajasthan police raided premises at several locations including Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Sirohi, Gurgaon and Jaipur, an SOG official said.

The SOG had begun the probe in July last year and registered an FIR December last year.

Mukesh Modi was arrested last December by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office for allegedly duping investors of Rs 200 crore through Ponzi scheme.

The society, with 806 branches across the country, including 309 in Rajasthan, has around 10 lakh investors with an investment of about Rs 8,000 crore with it.

The society siphoned investors' money by transferring funds to shell companies, said ATS and SOG Director General Bhupendra Singh Saturday.

Mukesh Modi also benefitted his family members and duped the investors, Singh added.

He said Modi illegally paid Rs 270 crore to his son, daughter and son-in-law as ex-gratia.

In addition to this, he also paid Rs 720 crore to his wife and son-in-law while terming them advisors to the society though they did not work for it, the official said .

Lakhs of investors are demanding their money back but the society is not returning it , said Singh.

He said the SOG arrested the 11 persons after a through probe.

The arrested persons include the society's chairman Ishwar Singh Sindhal and former chairmen Virender Modi and Kamlesh Chaudhary, and former managing directors Priyanka Modi and Lalita Rajpurohit.

The other arrested persons include society's senior vice president Vaibhav Lodha, chief financial officer Sameer Modi, assistant managing director Rohit Modi, besides Aditya Mega Project Pvt Ltd's director Bharat Modi and Techtonic Infrastructure Pvt Ltd's director Bharat Das Vaishnav.

Also arrested was Vivek Purohit, who is director in six companies of the ACCSL.

The FIR under various sections of IPC was registered by SOG itself in Jaipur after the primary investigation. Statements of 15 persons were also recorded," another official said.