Voice recordings hint at Puri being ‘guided’

The voice recordings of disgraced Citibank employee Shivraj Puri procured from brokerage companies have revealed that he allegedly used to conduct stock trading by reading out written statements/trade orders he received either through email or SMS. Sanjeev K Ahuja reports.

The voice recordings of disgraced Citibank employee Shivraj Puri procured from brokerage companies have revealed that he allegedly used to conduct stock trading by reading out written statements/trade orders he received either through email or SMS.

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Police suspect that somebody used to direct him on stock trading tips.

Investigation on this issue, however, might face a roadblock as the police may not be able to procure much information as crucial evidence in the Apple iPad used by Puri for dealings has been destroyed.

The Gurgaon police as well as a team of Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) are separately looking into the voice recordings.

Officers have also procured the order-log/trade-log to match the transactions the accused carried out with brokerage companies.

According to sources, Puri would pause while speaking in an abnormal manner when he was placing orders with brokerage firms.

This indicated that Puri was probably reading out some written text from an email or SMS, sources said adding that the audio recordings did not reflect a natural flow of speech.

The police have submitted in the Gurgaon court that Puri was probably working under the guidelines of his father Raghuraj Puri, the executive director of Normans Martin. The firm's eight bank accounts have been frozen. The police claimed it had detected transactions to the tune of R50 crore between Puri's accounts and Normans Martin.

The big challenge for investigating agencies now is to recover email details from Puri's Apple iPad. Since Apple does not host a server in India following encryption issues, recovering data would be a big problem, officers feel. According to sources, Puri would delete transactions from his email account in the fear of being caught by Citibank authorities.