E-Paper
Reebok ex-bosses sent to 7-day remand
A city court on Thursday remanded the five former officials of Reebok India, including its former MD Subhender Singh Prem and COO Vishnu Bhagat, in seven days’ police custody in Rs 870-crore fraud case.
A city court on Thursday remanded the five former officials of Reebok India, including its former MD Subhender Singh Prem and COO Vishnu Bhagat, in seven days’ police custody in Rs 870-crore fraud case.
They were arrested on Wednesday for allegedly fudging the company accounts and operating secret warehouses, causing a loss of over R870 crore. The two were booked on May 21 for fraud, criminal conspiracy and other charges under the IPC.
They allegedly committed the fraud through ghost distributors across the country and forged bills for over five years.
The three other accused — Prashant Bhatnagar, the former warehouse in charge of Reebok availed GM logistics, Sanjeev Mishra, Reebok’s former service provider, and Surakshit Bhat, a former company sales manager — arrested on Wednesday have also been sent to seven days’ police remand.
The prosecution had sought a 10-day remand for the three, arguing that they needed to visit the company’s establishments in Goa and Ahmedabad to collect evidences. Defence lawyer Praveen Agarwal said the accused should not be sent to remand as they had been “fully cooperating in the investigation and met the police whenever needed in the past five months.”
He said the accused were called for regular questioning on Wednesday morning and arrested in the evening.
The police, however, said four illegal warehouses secretly hired by Prem, Bhagat and Bhatnagar in the name of ‘Sanjeev Mishra’ had been unearthed. The police said the accused were involved in the generation of fake sales and “falsification of books of accounts of Reebok since 2005”.
“In the interrogation, it has been found they misused the invoice discounting facility with Standard Chartered Bank, Deutsche Bank and the Bank of America,” the police said.
