Six held for stock market scam in city

KOLKATA: Six brokers and businessmen were arrested in the early hours of Wednesday for their involvement in a Rs 120-crore scam at the Calcutta Stock Exchange.
Acting on a complaint by CSE secretary P.K. Roy, the detective department of the city police arrested Harish Biyani, Ramesh Biyani, Raj Kumar Jain, Gopal Singhania, Vasudev Singhania and Vijay Singhania from their homes around midnight.They have been remanded in police custody for 10 days.
However, the alleged masterminds behind the scam – Ashok Poddar and Dinesh Singhania – are still at large. Raids are being conducted and more persons are likely to be arrested. The arrested brokers had defaulted on payment of Rs 120 crore to sellers of scrips in March 2001, when a payments crisis had broken out at several bourses. Sebi was inquiring into the links of these brokers with BSE big bull Ketan Parekh. It has been alleged that the scamsters used to buy shares on behalf of Parekh at the CSE.
Harish Biyani and Raj Kumar Jain earlier served on the board of directors at the CSE. They are accused of forging documents to facilitate fraudulent transactions, said Mitra. It is also alleged that they were involved in grey market transactions, bypassing the official trading system of the CSE.
Bank accounts of the accused have been frozen. They have been charged with criminal conspiracy, cheating, criminal breach of trust, forgery and falsification of accounts.