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After more than 45 days of investigation, the Economic Offences Wing of the Mumbai police on Tuesday attached 1.19 lakh shares of Financial Technologies, owned by NSEL promoter Jignesh Shah.
The Chief of the Economic Offences Wing Rajvardhan told media persons that Shah’s smaller shareholding worth about Rs 51 lakh in India Energy Exchange Ltd has also been attached.
Along with the shares, his bungalow at Juhu, a row house in Goregaon, suburban Mumbai, which has a book value of Rs 78 lakh, land holding in Pune worth Rs 1.6 crore, and fixed deposits of Rs 11.75 crore have also been seized, he said.
Rajvardhan said that the value of the Juhu bungalow in the posh western suburbs of Mumbai and four dematerialised trading accounts is yet to be ascertained.
The agency has also attached the properties of Joseph Massey, one of the former directors of NSEL. His two flats in Andheri, suburban Mumbai, and shares worth Rs 98 lakh in MCX have been frozen. Four flats of Shreekant Javalgekar, former Managing Director and CEO of MCX, and Shankarlal Guru’s bungalow in Ahmedabad, have also been seized. Javalgekar’s shares in various companies worth Rs 1.2 crore have also been seized .
Guru is the former chairman of NSEL and father-in-law of Nilesh K. Patel, owner of N.K. Proteins Ltd, which owes the commodity exchange Rs 969 crore.
Rajvardhan said that till date 322 bank accounts with holdings of Rs 170 crore, 206 properties, which have a book value of Rs 2,580 crore, 15 vehicles and other assets have been seized from the 11 accused.
The cumulative book value of these assets is about Rs 2,985 crore.
If the assets are valued at the market rate, then it increases to about Rs 4,000 crore, he said.
The attachment and seizure process is still incomplete but “we are confident that we will be able to recover 90-95 per cent of the amount stuck in the NSEL crisis. Right now the focus of the investigation is on recovery of money and we are on the right track,” Rajvardhan said.
He added that contrary to the popular perception, Shah has managed to get a dividend of Rs 160 crore from shareholdings.
On the course of the investigation in the last 45 days, he said it had not slowed down but the money flow in the scam was to multiple accounts, which took time to unravel.
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