Jalandhar The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has arrested 11 accused in a case against the Pearls Group, a Chandigarh-based private company, in which ₹60,000 crore were collected from 5.5 crore investors across the country, as part of various Ponzi schemes. Such schemes typically lure small investors into parting with their savings, on the promises of exorbitant return; these have no approval of any regulatory authority.
The charge-sheet in this case was filed in April 2016, after the agency arrested Pearls Group chairman and managing director Nirmal Singh Bhangoo and his accomplices in January of the same year. The case was registered against Bhangoo and others in February 2014, after an inquiry revealed prima facie evidence of the Pearls Group having raised investments of several thousand of crores of rupees by issuing bogus land allotment letters to induce investors.
On Thursday, the agency said those arrested included Pearls Group company officials and businessmen from Delhi, Chandigarh, Kolkata and Bhubaneshwar. It added that after the Punjab and Haryana high court ordered the company to wind up the scheme and refund investors, a similar fraudulent scheme was operated under the name of the other/second private company.
The arrested accused are Mohanlal Sehajpal; Kanwaljit Singh Toor (all from Pearls Group), Praveen Kumar Agarwal, Mannoj Kumar Jain, Akash Agarwal, Anil Kumar Khemka, Subhash Agarwal, Rajesh Agarwal (all businessmen) from Delhi, Chandigarh,…
