Two more employees identified in Citibank fraud case

Hero Corporate Service on Wednesday said it has identified two more employees who could have colluded with its former Associate Vice-President Sanjay Gupta and Citibank employees in the Rs 300-crore fraud.

"Following an initial internal enquiry, two employees -- Ganpat Singh and Gaurav Jain-- working in the accounts department have also been identified to have been in possible collusion with Sanjay Gupta and Citibank employees," Hero Corporate Service said in statement.

They have been sent on leave with immediate effect by the company, it added. "This is in addition to the suspension of Gupta by the company. Further appropriate action will be taken after the final outcome of the enquiry," it said.

Earlier this week, Gupta was remanded to a five-day police custody in connection with the Citibank fraud case for allegedly investing about Rs 250 crore (Rs 2.5 billion) belonging to promoters of the Hero group companies.

The Gurgaon police arrested him under the section 120B of the Indian Penal Code that deals with criminal conspiracy.
According to the police, Gupta had invested around Rs 250 crore from different Hero Group companies and their promoters.

For this, Gupta had formed two finance companies -- BG Finance and G2S, and took commission of Rs 20 crore (Rs 200 million) from Shivraj Puri, the alleged mastermind in the estimated Rs 300-crore (Rs 3 billion) fraud discovered at the Citibank's Gurgaon branch, for investing the amount.

The police had last week called Gupta for questioning along with Puri. Puri had confessed that Gupta was aware of the forged SEBI letter, on which the amounts were lured from high networth clients, the police had said.