The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has taken into custody five individuals, including Suresh Venkatachari, who is the President and Promoter of M/s Securekloud Technologies Limited (STL), R. S. Ramani, who is a former CFO and Promoter of M/s Securekloud Technologies Limited, Anupam Gupta, who is the Managing Director and Promoter of M/s Pro Fin Capital Services Limited, Hemal Mehta, a sharebroker, and Rohit Arora, a loan broker. The arrests were made under Section 19 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002.
According to an FIR filed by the CCB, Chennai, several sharebrokers and financial service providers defrauded complainant Suresh Venkatachari by selling shares that he pledged as collateral for loans, leading to the filing of a case under the PMLA. In order to sell the shares off-market, the complaint claimed that the share brokers who had supplied the loan had falsified the signatures on the Delivery Instruction papers.
According to PMLA’s inquiry, these share brokerage and financial services businesses’ directors and beneficial owners moved shares worth Rs. 160 crore off-market before selling them.
The inquiry also showed that the Promoter of STL’s complaint was false because Suresh Venkatachari and R S Ramani were complicit in a bigger scheme to defraud the public by inflating the company’s records and diverting monies to other businesses owned by STL’s CFO and CEO. R. S. Ramani sold shares worth Rs 110 crore on the open market to profit from his criminal activity, while Suresh borrowed Rs 40 crore from share brokers.
In an illegal scheme, Anupam Gupta and Hemal Mehta engaged in insider trading and attempted to influence the share price of 8k Miles (now M/s Securekloud Technologies Ltd) (STL). Anupam Gupta sold Suresh Venkatachari’s shares, gave him Rs. 14 crores, engaged in unlawful trading of the 8k Miles shares, and eventually sold the shares to the general public. After Hemal Mehta completed the aforementioned task for Suresh Venkatachari, payment was provided in the form of shares. All of these transactions were orchestrated by Rohit Arora, who was fully aware that they involved unlawful activities.
On March 24, 2023, all of the apprehended suspects were taken into custody under Section 19 of the PMLA, 2002 due to their involvement in the production of more than Rs. 200 Crore in criminal profits and their conviction for money laundering. The defendants have been sent to judicial detention till April 6, 2023, after being presented before the Hon’ble Special Court for PMLA in Chennai. More research is now being conducted.
