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Widening the ambit of its probe, the police has sought information from the National Stock Exchange (NSE) about investments made by the alleged mastermind of the Citibank fraud, Shivraj Puri, even as it tried to locate his iPad, which may contain crucial data.
Police requested NSE to provide details of sale-purchase transactions undertaken by Puri through brokerage firms - Religare, Bonanza and Norman Martin.
Gurgaon police commissioner S S Deswal said, "We are verifying contents of records with NSE with regard to transactions."
Most of the funds were invested by Puri into Nifty options - a derivative product, with the NSE benchmark index, Nifty, as underlying security.
The investor has no obligation to take delivery and needs to pay only margin money.
In this derivative, investors bet on upward or downward moves of Nifty and returns depend on the accuracy of such bets.
Sebi probes violation in income proof rules.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is probing whether the stock brokers collected from the accused his income-proof documents, a mandatory requirement for trade in the derivatives market.
The market regulator had made it mandatory in December 2009 for brokerage firms to collect income-proof documents from all their clients before allowing them to trade in the derivatives segment.
Preliminary investigations into the alleged fraud have found he diverted his clients' money into the derivatives market.
According to the probe, Sebi has found lapses by brokerage firms in collecting all the required financial documents from Puri and others through whose accounts he invested in the stock market, a senior official said.
The brokers have been asked by Sebi to furnish all the documents that they had collected from Puri, subsequent to which the regulator would check their veracity.
Court extends police remand of prime accused.
A local Gurgaon court today extended the police custody of Puri till January 12.
While demanding extension of remand, the police told the court it was looking for an iPad and a computer used by Puri and further interrogation was needed to locate the missing items.
Investigators said the iPad would provide them with details of transactions and the people Puri was regularly in touch with. The police are not ruling out the possibility of the involvement of more people in the fraud.
Puri was relationship manager of Citibank in Gurgaon and looked after investment-related details of high net worth clients.
He is charged, with alleged accomplice Sanjay Gupta, a senior member of Hero Corporate Services, with duping investors of more than Rs 300 crore (Rs 3 billion) by illegally transferring their money to stock markets.
The duo had also allegedly used a forged Sebi document to dupe their clients.
