The Economic Offences Wing of the Coimbatore Rural Police on Monday filed the additional charge sheet in the Fine Futures fraud case at the special court hearing cases filed under the Tamil Nadu Protection of Interests of Depositors (In Financial Establishments) Act, 1997.
According to sources, the police led by Additional Deputy Superintendent of Police Balaji Saravanan filed the charge sheet that runs to 7,000 pages.
Along with the charge sheet, the police also submitted supporting documents that were spread over 1,50,000 pages.
The police filed the first charge sheet on May 3, 2013.
The police had registered the cases around two years ago after duped investors of the now-defunct firm complained that the firm’s promoters A.S. Senthil Kumar, M. Vivek, M. Nithyanandan and R. Sathyalakshmi had failed to pay the promised returns.
The police registered a case against the promoters of the firm under sections 120 (B) (conspiracy), 406 (criminal breach of trust), 419 and 420 (cheating), 471 read with 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating and using a forged document as genuine) of Indian Penal Code, sections 4,5 and 6 of Prize Chits and Money Circulation Scheme (Banning) Act of 1978 besides sections 5 of the Tamil Nadu Protection of Interests of Depositors (in financial establishments) Act of 1997.
As complaints started pouring in, the District Crime Branch Police transferred on February 20, 2013 the case to the EOW, which started receiving complaints from duped investors from across the region.
The additional charge sheet pertains to as many as 14,766 complaints from Coimbatore. And, the money involved in the fraud was Rs. 105.40 crore, the sources said.
The sources said that the EOW had recovered properties with a market value of about Rs. 80 crore, which they planned to auction or sell based on court directions to compensate the duped investors. But that would be at a later stage, after the trial.
The EOW case was that the firm’s promoters floated an online multi-level marketing company, enrolled investment agents and collected money from the public promising attractive returns.
The agents collected money from the public and were the firm’s public face. But once the news of the fraud spread around, the agents went underground fearing police action.
In some cases, the agents had also lost money as they too had invested.
The promoters also went underground. After following leads for a long time, the EOW arrested the promoters (first three accused in the case) in Chennai in March 2013.
