A private company, being probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on the charge of defrauding crores of investors in northern India of an estimated Rs.45,000 crore, had cheated thousands in Kerala of their life’s savings in 2012-13, according to the State police.
The police are scheduled to review the cases pending against the firm (PACL Ltd) in Kerala against the backdrop of CBI raids on its offices in Haryana, Punjab, and New Delhi this week.
Interestingly, the firm had sponsored several high-profile events in Kerala, including boat races in Kollam and Alappuzha, ostensibly to earn legitimacy and political patronage.
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Investigators said video footages of the events show that they were thickly attended by politicians and celebrities. However, the firm’s directors, who are now high on the wanted list of the CBI, were curiously absent from the occasions and the company was represented largely by its contract workers.
(The police later told the High Court in a sworn statement that some of the firm’s employees who were arraigned as accused in the case seemed unaware of the “real persons behind the business.”)
In 2012, it had closed down the offices of the firm in Kasaragod, Thrissur, and Kannur on the charge of cheating the public of their savings by running a fraudulent investment scheme.
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The firm employed hundreds of agents, who were given a disproportionately high percentage of the investments they canvassed as commission. In its affidavit to the High Court, the police said the firm had collected large amounts of money from the public.
The investigation revealed that the land the firm claimed to own in its brochures did not exist and no registration had taken place.