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Chartered accountant arrested in connection with ₹16.06 crore fraud
PUNE The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Pune Crime Branch has arrested a chartered accountant in connection with a ₹16
PUNE The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Pune Crime Branch has arrested a chartered accountant in connection with a ₹16.06 crore fraud, in which 418 investors have allegedly been duped.
The firm where the CA worked, Shivkanya and Shivkanya Investment office in Shukrawar peth, allegedly offered 18-22 per cent returns on share market investments, police said.
The accused CA has been identified as Kailas Radhakisan Mundada (42), a resident of Sinhgad road. Earlier, the main accused have been identified as Maheshkumar Bhagwandas Lohia (31), a resident of Sinhgad road, Sunil Purshottam Somani (54), a resident of Bopodi and Gajanan Mahadeo Mane (30), a resident of Parli in Beed.
Based on a complaint of a woman investor, the police arrested Lohia and Somani on September 25, 2019, while Mane was arrested on October 3, the same year. Currently, Lohia is in judicial custody and in jail, while Somani and Mane are out on bail. The crime took place between November 2016 and September 2019.
The 51-year old complainant stated that she had invested ₹10,00,000 in the scheme which promised 18-22 per cent returns. This investment was made in 2019. She did not receive any returns. She got to know about this investment option from a family member, who knows the owners, as per the complaint.
Lohia had credited the complainant’s cheque of ₹10 lakh in the bank account and instead had sent fake profit-loss statements of share trading to her email account. The crime branch arrested Mundada on Tuesday and produced him before a local court which remanded him to custody. According to EOW officials, the CA has accepted an amount of Rs1.10 crore from the main accused and an entry to that effect has emerged in a forensic report. EOW sleuths maintained that he is a practicing CA and some of the investors are his clients. “His entire role in the fraud is being probed in detail,” EOW officials said.
A case under Sections 420 (punishment for cheating), 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) along with Section 3 of Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors (MPID) Act, 1999 has been registered at Khadak police station.
