Bengaluru: Though Ballari mining baron and former BJP leader Janardhan Reddy has been enlarged on conditional bail in the Ponzi scheme case, there could be trouble brewing for him and the owners of Ambidant Marketing Pvt Ltd, Syed Fareed Ahmed and his son Syed Afaq Ahmed, from the Enforcement Directorate.
Top sources said that the ED is likely to book cases against all the accused under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) for “Ambidant has cheated over 15,000 people for over Rs 600 crore. The ED will investigate under the PMLA what happened to the investors’ money? Why, where and with whom the money was parked? If during Investigation it is revealed that the money was parked with Reddy, he will also be booked under PMLA along with Fareed, Afaq and others. The company had paid back the investors initially and later they cheated them, which means that the money has been used for purposes other than what was promised to the investors. The ED will book cases against all those, who have siphoned the money and have used it for illegal purposes under the money laundering Act,” said an officer.
In January, the ED had fined Ambidant Rs 1.86 crore under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) after confiscating Rs 1.97 crore from them, which was illegally being used for forex trading.
“While Fareed paid the penalty, he used this as an alibi to default on his payments to investors. An investor in his police complaint stated that each time he asked Fareed for money, he told him that the money was confiscated by the ED. Though the total amount of money, which was recovered from Fareed was around Rs 4 crore, he went around telling investors that their money was seized by the ED. Ambidant received investments of around '954 crore since its inception in December 2016,” the officer said.
He felt it needs to be investigated as to why the alleged Rs 20 crore was paid to Reddy. “There was no case pending against Ambidant after the FEMA case. If this money was indeed paid to Reddy by Ambidant the ED will charge him under the PMLA,” the officer added. The Directorate has requested the city police to share with them the details of the cases against all the accused.
