Madurai: The Madurai Bench of Madras high court on Wednesday transferred the investigation of financial fraud case of Rs 71 crore to CBI investigation.
M. Rengarajan, assistant vice president of Lakshmi Vilas Bank Ltd in his petition filed in the court stated that 27 loan applicants conspired with S. Siva and S. Suruli Velu, the partner and proprietor of Shree Sharavana Traders and Selvarani Impex, Selvarani Dhall Industries and management and the employees of Star Agri and committed serious fraud swindling public money to a tune of '71 crore.
Star Agri had a tie-up with the bank to provide warehouse management services relating to agricultural commodities, inventories, which inter alia, would include collateral management services, inspection, valuation, monitoring services.
Meanwhile, P. Aruna Mugesh from Madurai had availed a loan for Rs 2.91 crore from the bank. The bank sanctioned loan to him against the stocks of red masoor dhal stored at K Rajendran godown at Rajapalayam which was leased out by Star Agri.
The bank sanctioned only based on test certificate and storage receipts issued by Star Agri stating that Aruna Mugesh had stored 10,030 bags containing red masoor dhal which values Rs 4.17 crore, said the petitioner.
However the borrower didn’t pay the loan amount despite the repeated request from bank. In the meantime, Star Agri filed a complaint with Virudhunagar police alleging that Mahesh had stored husk with them.
When the bank employees conducted an inquiry, they found Star Agri had conspired with Mahesh and S. Siva and S. Suruli Velu, the partner and proprietor of Shree Sharavana Traders and Selvarani Impex, Selvarani Dhal Industries and Management in the crime.
Further inquiry also revealed that in similar fraudulent manner, 27 transactions took place in bank to a tune of Rs 71 crore in the name of different persons. Hence he demanded CBCID investigation.
After examined the petition, Justice S. .S Sundar transfer the investigation from local police to CBI and asked to file a status report on December 5.
