The city police have sealed the offices of Artic Gold and Diamonds and seized their financial records and computers as part of their investigation into the Rs.16-crore scam allegedly committed by the company. Company chief executive officer Jithu Menon was arrested by the police on Saturday.
“We have seized all their records, computers, and hard drives. The computers have been handed over to the Cyber Cell for further investigation. We are currently working on the huge volume of data relating to the finances of the company,” said Central circle inspector Y. Nizamudheen.
The police are on the lookout for the other directors of the company. Officials suspect that the directors are hiding in Tamil Nadu to evade arrest.
“We have also contacted the Registrar of Companies to find out more about the structure of the company and who else is involved,” CI Nizamudheen said.
The police are currently faced with the Herculean task of sifting through records of money obtained from hundreds of people and diverted to various accounts. The company allegedly took about Rs.16 crore from 2,500 people. The city police have registered at least five cases in connection with the scam so far. The company was reportedly established in 2010 and set up eight branches in Kerala and Tamil Nadu since then. The police suspect that Jithu used his contacts from his stint as an insurance agent previously to net people into the scam. The company offered a scheme by which people could invest money in installments to buy gold 10 years later at the rates at which gold was being sold in 2010. To attract more people, the company said their original investment would be returned to them with 18 per cent interest.
The company also employed a large network of agents and sub-agents who were given targets to rope in maximum number of people. These agents used their personal contacts to rope in hundreds of people into the scheme. An agent of the company said the employees had not been paid for the last month. They grew more suspicious when the company gave all its employees a holiday for Onam and then did not open. The cheques given by the accused to some of the investors bounced, prompting them to approach the police.
