Plot thickens as police arrest Hero group man

On the basis of information provided by prime accused Shivraj Puri, the Gurgaon police on Sunday night arrested Sanjay Gupta, associate vice-president of Hero Corporate Services Limited (HCSL), in connection with the multi-crore Citibank fraud. Sanjeev K Ahuja reports.

On the basis of information provided by prime accused Shivraj Puri, the Gurgaon police on Sunday night arrested Sanjay Gupta, associate vice-president of Hero Corporate Services Limited (HCSL), in connection with the multi-crore Citibank fraud.

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Gupta was arrested when he visited DLF City (Phase 2) police station to participate in routine investigation. Puri has been maintaining ever since he was detained that Sanjay Gupta was the mastermind behind the multi-crore fraud. The police who roped in experts gathered evidence before arresting him on the charges of conspiracy.

Senior police officials had called Sanjay Gupta as well as representatives of brokerage companies — Religare and Bonanza, two of the five brokerage firms, where Puri had invested the money — on Friday.

During interrogation, Puri revealed that till May last year he had been dealing in individual investment portfolios with Citibank in the capacity of relationship manager.

“I happened to meet Gupta in April. He told me to start dealing in corporate investment business also for bigger profit margins. Before that I was dealing in individual high networth investors. It was on his advice that I started using various accounts of my relatives for my business for corporate investments. In May, Gupta made the first corporate investment of R5 crore through me,” Puri added.

The investigators said initially they did not believe the claims of Puri that Gupta was the brain behind the fraud. But when they searched Gupta’s account details, it was found that about R20 crore was transferred to his accounts in the last six months. “This raised the suspicion and Gupta we arrested,” said a police official.