Two men have been arrested for duping a Gujarat-based company of Rs.12 crore on the pretext of providing them loan to the tune of Rs.400 crore.
According to police, with financial crisis plaguing the Kutch-based Balaji Group of Companies for the last few years, the company was in dire need of loan. In 2012, the offer came from a distant relative of the company’s director Naresh Kumar Sharma.
A meeting was arranged at Hotel Crown Plaza in Okhla in May 2012 in which some people posing as representatives of a financial company offered to arrange the loan. A fee of Rs.20 crore was demanded for the disbursement of the loan. To add credibility, the alleged fraudsters were represented by one David Welham who claimed to be a British national settled in Bangkok.
“Sharma paid around Rs. 12 crore as “processing fee”, but the people offering the loan began dilly dallying on some or the other pretext. They soon became untraceable,” said Mangesh Kashyap, Deputy Commissioner of Police-II (Economic Offences Wing).
The Delhi Police were approached and the investigations were handed over to the Economic Offences Wing. Investigations revealed that the suspects were staying in Faridabad. A raid was conducted on Thursday and two persons, Arun Kumar Sharma and Parvez Alam, were arrested. The duo already has seven cases registered against them at different places in the country.