Bhubaneswar: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the state Crime Branch here Saturday claimed to have busted a Rs 600-crore trading scam and arrested the proprietor of a brokerage firm.
EOW Superintendent of Police (SP) Dilip Tripathy said the accused, identified as Saiyyad Jiyajur Rahaman, is a resident of Hooghly district in West Bengal. “Saiyyad runs LFS Broking and PMS Services through which he had duped at least 6,219 investors from Odisha, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Bihar.”
Saiyyad was detained at Kolkata Airport by Bureau of Immigration (BoI) upon his return from Dubai after a look out circular (LOC) was issued against him, said a senior EOW official.
Giving more details about the trading scam, Tripathy said a probe was launched after a complaint was lodged by Arun Kumar Pattnaik, a victim of the fraud. He alleged that LFS Broking and PMS Services had cheated him of more than Rs 20 lakh. “They had lured me by offering 2 per cent interest on the invested amount till the final payment,” Arun said.
After duping the investors, the EOW SP said, Saiyyad used to transfer the funds to the brokerage firm’s sisterly company Arambagh Hotel and Resort. His wives Habiba Begum and Ranjita Mahajan are said to be the directors of the company.
Preliminary investigations revealed that the company has siphoned off nearly Rs 100 crore from investors in Odisha. Initially, he made monthly interest transfers for a brief period, but he stopped it later and went incommunicado.
Notably, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has banned Saiyyad as stock broker for five years following the serious complaint against him.
The EOW has booked Saiyaad under relevant Sections of Odisha Protection of Interests of Depositors (OPID) Act, and produced him before a court here Saturday.
PNN