A special court in Coimbatore on Friday sentenced two directors of Tiruppur-based Paazee Forex Trading India Private Limited to undergo 27 years of rigorous imprisonment (RI) in the ₹930.71-crore forex trading scam.
Judge A.S. Ravi of the Special Court for the trial of cases registered under the Tamil Nadu Protection of Interests of Depositors (TNPID) Act in Coimbatore awarded the punishment to K. Mohanraj and A. Kamalavalli and imposed a fine of ₹171.74 crore on them, each ₹85.87 crore.
Of the total fine, ₹ 171,70,00,000 should be handed over to the competent authority/District Revenue Officer who shall distribute the same to all the depositors, including the 1,402 depositors mentioned in the final report, proportionately towards compensation, after appeal time was completed, the judgment said.
The court condemned the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which investigated the scam, for not examining all the depositors and recording their statements, but filed the final report in respect of ₹930,71,29,883 the accused alleged to have been collected from 58,571 investors.
As per the judgment, all the remaining genuine depositors, apart from the 1,402 cited in the final report, were also entitled to get their principal with interest from the accused. They were entitled to lodge fresh complaints before the CBI for prosecution against the accused for criminal liability or approach the competent authority/DRO to get back their principal amount and interest. The order said that merely because their name did not find a place in the final report, no remaining depositors shall be denied their principal and interest, if genuine, by the competent authority/DRO.
The court directed the competent authority/DRO to verify the identity of the depositors or if died, their legal heirs in the presence of CBI. It said that CBI could not avoid or refuse to lodge fresh First Information Report (FIR) and prosecute the accused as there was no limitation in lodging FIR. The court also directed CBI to furnish the list of depositors and total due amount to the accused and to the DRO. The agency had to produce the copy and proof of acknowledgement before the court within one month.
It was in 2009 people who invested their money with the accused for forex trading lodged a complaint with the police accusing them of cheating. The firm was promoted by K. Kathiravan, his son Mohanraj and Kamalavalli. Tiruppur District Crime Branch registered a case against them in September, 2009 and later CBI took over the investigation. Kathiravan died during the trial of the case.
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