New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday said that they recently conducted search operations at 16 premises across Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi covering office and residential premises of some companies.
The companies are Securekloud Technologies Limited, a listed entity, Pro Fin Capital Services Limited, Quantum Global Securities Limited (QGSL), another listed company, Unity Global Financial Services Pvt Limited, Desert River Capital Pvt Ltd, which are share brokerage and financial services companies and its promoters.
The searches led to the seizure of Rs 1.04 crore in cash, gold and diamond jewellery, identification of immovable properties of more than Rs 30 crore and other movable assets in various DEMAT accounts as well as seizure of incriminating documents and digital evidence.
The ED initiated money laundering investigation on the basis of the FIR filed by Suresh Venkatachari, the promoter and CEO of Securekloud Technologies Limited (STL), before CCB-I Chennai under sections 420, 465, 468, 471 and 120B of IPC against QGSL and its Directors and one Rohit Arora.
The company, Securekloud Technologies Limited (STL), earlier known as 8k Miles Software Services Limited, a software and IT services company, is having presence in India and the US.
The complaint was lodged against some share brokers and financial service provider companies, which sold the shares pledged by the promoter of STL in order to borrow against STL shares. The complaint also stated that the share brokers, who have provided loans, forged the signatures on Delivery Instruction slips and sold the shares off-market.
The ED has learnt that the directors and beneficial owners of these share brokerage and financial services companies have transferred the shares worth Rs 160 crore in off-market and subsequently sold the same to generate huge proceeds of crime.
The investigation also revealed that the complaint lodged by the Promoter of STL was misleading as he and his CFO were involved in a larger conspiracy of cheating the general public by way of inflating books, diverting funds of the company to the unrelated business activities of companies having stakes of the CFO and CEO of STL.
“Even the suspicious activity for share price manipulation was being done by some unscrupulous share traders with tacit support and connivance of senior management of STL which was noticed and the same is being looked into. The larger conspiracy of promoters of the listed company and the share broking companies that have provided loans and allegedly sold away the shares of the company is under investigation from the perspective of money laundering,” said the official.
_IANS