Enforcement Directorate raids its ex-officer in Rs 600 crore ponzi scam

New Delhi/Chandigarh, March 22

The ED on Thursday searched the premises of its ex-Deputy Director and others in connection with a money laundering probe in Rs 600 crore alleged ponzi scam case.

The ED officials said the houses of its former officer Gurnam Singh, advocate Puneet Sharma and another person in Chandigarh and Mohali are being raided since morning under provisions of the Prevention of the Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

Singh has been the investigating officer of the ponzi case and was relieved from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in January last year.

Officials claimed that Singh, the ex-Deputy Director of the ED’s Chandigarh zone, was allegedly taking bribes of about Rs 4 crore to Rs 6 crore in purported connivance with Sharma.

The raids had been launched to gather more evidence in this context, they said.

ED Director Karnal Singh had issued stern directives that instances of corruption in the organisation would be not be tolerated.

The agency had conducted multiple searches in this case last year and it had also arrested the absconding agent of the alleged chit fund firm under scanner--Kamal K Bakshi--under the anti-money laundering law.

The case, the ED had said, pertained to thousands of investors who were “systematically lured and cheated of more than Rs 600 crore by floating ponzi or pyramid schemes assuring exorbitant returns”.

It had said that the alleged “mastermind” of the scheme is a Malaysian identified as Mugundhan Gangam who floated two firms--Ms Unipay 2U Marketing Private Limited and Unigateway2U Trading Private Limited--in India.

Describing the modus operandi of the alleged cheating in this case, the agency said the early investors of the ponzi schemes floated by the firm were paid exorbitant returns in order to win over their confidence.

“When thousands of people across the country invested crores of rupees in the said ponzi schemes, the companies stopped the payouts or monthly returns (since October 2010) and gradually siphoned off crores of rupees of investors,” it had said.

“The company manipulated by using a web of bank accounts and layering of money through a plethora of such accounts,” the ED alleged.

The agency had registered a criminal FIR in the case based on an earlier complaint of other central investigative agencies. PTI