Targeting High Networth Individuals (HNI) and several big corporate houses, a 32-year-old relationship manager of banking major Citibank managed to swindle funds running into several crores in the National Capital Region (NCR).
The multi-crore scandal mastermind, identified as Shivraj Puri, surrendered before a city court on Thursday morning, after which Gurgaon police slapped several charges of cheating and forgery against him.
Over a period of 14 months and with the help of three accomplices, who are his relatives, Puri allegedly managed to siphon off Rs 300 crore (Rs 3 billion) from the clientele of the Gurgaon DLF Phase II branch of Citibank.
Police claim that two-thirds of the amount is from corporate houses, while the rest belong to individuals.
A senior police officer involved in the investigations in the case said, "From the investigations that the bank and we have conducted so far, it looks like Puri opened accounts for three people - Prem Nath, Sneha Prem Nath (his grandparents) and Deeksha Puri (his mother) in September 2009.
He obtained a forged letter head of Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) and issued a circular on this, inviting customers to deposit funds in these accounts.
In the circular, he promised returns as high as 18 per cent and managed to lure about 30 customers. After this, he transferred all the money to his personal account in the bank, before investing it in the stock market through a brokerage firm his father, Raghuraj Puri owns."
A spokesperson for Citibank said that Puri has been working in the branch for the past seven years.
When asked about how the bank came to know about the fraud, the spokesperson said, "Earlier this month, a customer double checked with Citibank senior management about a particular scheme. Since such a scheme did not exist, we launched an investigation into the matter.
We suspended Puri and informed the Reserve bank of India and Sebi. Our bank's assistant vice president Binu Soman put in a formal complaint to the Gurgaon police. Other than the accounts we have given to the police, no other accounts in the bank have been affected."
After the police slapped charges under several sections of the IPC, the district magistrate sent him to seven days of Police Custody.
"Our current job at hand is to trace the money, which has already gone in the stock market. During interrogations, we will try and recover the invested money. We have frozen all bank accounts belonging to him and his family," a Gurgaon police official said.