Search the Internet          Tips  Sites: Finance, Investment

Police raid Bajoria over CSE crisis

BS Bureau in Kolkata

Jute baron Arun Kumar Bajoria was on Friday sucked into the Kolkata Police investigation into the Rs 120 crore (Rs 1.2 billion) payment default at Calcutta Stock Exchange, with his stockbroking business being raided.

The detective department (special cell) zeroed in on Mega Stock Ltd, an associate company of Bajoria, who is also a big ticket badla financier in this part of the country, on the plea that the firm is a "front entity" of the absconding stock broker Dinesh Kumar Singhania.

Singhania, along with Ashok Poddar and Harish Chandra Biyani, has equal outstanding to the local bourse towards their pay out obligations in March 2001. The police are looking for the missing Singhania.

Deputy commissioner (detective department) Somen Mitra said seized documents as well as records saved in computers from the office of Mega Stock prima facie revealed five other companies were involved in illegal badla transaction and circular trading among them.

The companies which were allegedly involved in badla transaction and circular trading with Mega Stock are: Mega Resources Ltd, Hooghly Holdings Ltd, Hooghly Investments Ltd and Gulmohar Impex. These are all Arun Bajoria-managed entities and Bajoria steered his major acquisitions on stock exchanges through them.

Mitra said Singhania was one of the directors of Mega Stock as also Raj Kumar Jain alias Patni who was arrested with five other persons on late Tuesday night. Other directors on Mega include Arun Kumar Bajoria, Vinod Bajoria and Sashi Bajoria.

He added the police came to know that the company's application seeking membership of the National Stock Exchange was rejected in 2000 on the grounds of alleged Fera violations by Bajoria.

Bajoria could not be contacted as "he was not at home." Sources close to him described the police swoop at Mega Stock as "nothing special." They said the Singhanias had been share brokers of the Bajoria family for over 30 years.

Although the police has arrested associates of Biyani and Singhani late Tuesday night, Dinesh has managed to stay out of the police net. The police has not arrested any associate of Poddar so far.

It is learnt that the police on Friday detained an associate of Poddar for interrogation and later arrested him. This was not confirmed by Mitra. "The police may raid an office of a Poddar associate," was all he offered.

Friday's raid of a Bajoria office sends tremor across the local broking fraternity as it implies that the police may also interrogate other big ticket brokers linked with Singhania.

Powered by

ALSO READ:
More Money Headlines