Citi fraud: Puri's remand extended till Jan 14

A local court on Wednesday extended police remand of Shivraj Puri, the main accused in the alleged Rs 400 crore (Rs 4 billion) Citibank fraud, by 2 more days till January 14 as police is yet to recover iPad considered to be vital evidence.

The Chief Judicial Magistrate D N Bhardwaj remanded Puri in police custody for two more days after public prosecutor said that police needed more time to gather evidence and verification of data gathered by chartered accountants.

Puri, who was a Relationship Manager at Citibank's Gurgaon branch, was arrested by the police last month after the Rs 400-crore scam was detected. He was remanded in police custody for seven days, which was extended by 6 days on January 6.

Police, sources said, are keen to get hold of Puri's iPad which could provide vital clues about the details of money transactions and contacts of Puri.

He is accused of luring high networth individuals to invest in bogus schemes on the promise of unusually high returns and diverted their money to stock markets. According to Citibank lawyer Harish Malhotra, Puri has also admitted that his father Raghuraj Puri was an accomplice and he invested about Rs 50 crore in Norman Martin in which his father is a director.

Meanwhile, anticipatory bail plea of Raghuraj Puri would come up for hearing tomorrow. Most of the funds were invested by Puri into Nifty options -- a derivative product with the NSE benchmark index Nifty as underlying security, where the investor has no obligation to take the delivery and needs to pay only margin money.

In this derivative, investors bet on upward or downward move of Nifty and returns depend on accuracy of such bets.

Victims of the Citibank fraud include Hero Group promoters (Rs 250 crore) and Helion Advisors Managing Director Sanjeev Aggarwal (Rs 33 crore).