Accountant siphons off ₹2.73 crore from share-trading firm

Mumbai: The property cell of Mumbai crime branch on Sunday arrested a wanted man for allegedly siphoning off ₹2

Mumbai: The property cell of Mumbai crime branch on Sunday arrested a wanted man for allegedly siphoning off ₹2.73 crore from a share-trading firm.

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The accused, identified as Manish Maurya, 31, a resident of Kandivali, was on the run since January 2022 after an FIR was registered against him at the MRA Marg police station. Maurya’s associate, Rakesh Vishvakarma, is still on the run.

According to the police, Maurya was working as an accountant with Satco Share Trading Private Limited in Fort, South Mumbai. As per the allegation by the firm, Maurya opened an account in the name of his associate in the company and showed a bogus bank cheque entry claiming that Vishvakarma had invested an amount in the firm. Maurya later generated a fake entry and transferred ₹2.73 crore in Vishvakarma’s bank account.

In December 2021, the company noticed the fictitious transactions after Maurya stopped reporting to the office. The company then filed a case with the MRA Marg police station. During investigation, the police learnt that the accused had changed his residential address and started staying at another place in Kandivali, Shashikant Pawar, police inspector, property cell, said.

“To nab the culprit, we circulated a fake message in a share market brokers’ group that a person from Gujarat wanted to invest a huge amount and was looking for a trusted broker. When the message reached the accused, he contacted one of our members and a meeting was fixed on Saturday. Once it was cleared that he is the same person, we nabbed him and brought him to the unit office where he confessed the crime,” added Pawar.

The police said that the accountant received ₹1.5-crore share, while the rest of the amount was with Vishvakarma, a Palghar resident. The accused was handed over to the MRA Marg police station for further legal process, Pawar added.