A senior EOW official said that after the promoters’ addresses were traced, they were issued notices on Friday and asked to record their statements in connection with the multi-crore EPF scam. “The EOW team can also visit Delhi in search of promoters of six other brokerage firms involved in the investment process,” he said.
The officer said that so far the promoter of one of these brokerage firms, Ashish Chowdhary, had been arrested in connection with the scam. This is in addition to four other arrests made in the case — that of former managing director of the Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited, AP Mishra, former finance director of the UPPCL, Sudhanshu Dwivedi, former secretary of the employees trust, Praveen Kumar Gupta, and Gupta’s son Abhinav.
“The EOW has also approached a city court to increase the judicial custody of the former trust secretary and finance director, as the same is due to end on Sunday. EOW investigators are strongly opposing the bail applications of the two along with that of the former managing director of the UPPCL at the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court. The trio approached the high court after their bail applications were rejected by the district and sessions court,” said the officer.
He said the probe so far had revealed that over ₹65 crore (₹650 million) was paid in commissions to 14 brokerage firms hired to invest ₹4,122.5 crore (over ₹ 40 billion) of the UPPCL employees’ EPF in multiple short-term fixed deposits (FDs) with the DHFL since March 2017. “This amount was transferred to 14 different bank accounts of these brokerage firms, 12 of which had fake addresses. They were floated only for investing the employees’ PF,” said the officer.
Till September, ₹ 1,854.3 crore (over ₹18 billion) were recovered after the FDs matured. However, ₹2,268 crore (over ₹22 billion) still remains with the DHFL, which came under the scanner of the Enforcement Directorate in October this year.
Prasanta Patnaik