Pearls Group chief arrested

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Friday arrested Nirmal Singh Bhangoo, chairman-cum -managing director of Pearls Group, and three other top officials in connection with Rs 45,000 crore alleged scam in which 55 million investors were duped.

Bhangoo, CMD of PGF Limited and ex-Chairman of Pearls Australasia Pty Limited, along with Sukhdev Singh, managing director and promoter-director of PACL,  Gurmeet Singh, executive director (Finance) and Subrata Bhattacharya, ED in the PGF/PACL Ponzi Scheme Case, CBI Press Information Officer R K Gaur said.

Senior CBI officials said the four executives were arrested after detailed questioning today at agency headquarters. The sources said during the questioning they were giving inconsistent statements and stopped cooperating which resulted in their arrest. “The case involves alleged collection of Rs 45,000 crore from about 55 million investors all over the country. The case was registered under sections 120 B (criminal conspiracy) read with 420 (cheating) of IPC,” Gaur said. The investors were lured with the promise of huge returns. CBI sources said arrests have been made in connection with the case against officials of Pearls Agrotech Corporation Ltd (PACL) and Pearls Golden Forest Ltd (PGF) for allegedly raising investments from over 5.5 crore investors through collective investment scheme under the garb of sale and development of agricultural land.

They said the agency's probe into the allegations has shown that investors were issued bogus land allotment letters. In ponzi schemes, returns are given to investors from the money collected from other depositors in a pyramid-like structure.

CBI sources said during the searches, it had recovered documents showing benami properties worth crores in India and abroad.

It was revealed that PGF, on being directed by the High Court of Punjab and Haryana to wind up the scheme and refund the money to the investors, a similar fraudulent scheme was operated under the name of PACL with office at Barakhamba Road in New Delhi, CBI had alleged in its FIR.

It is alleged that funds collected from new investors of PACL were used to repay the earlier investors of PGF to stave off criminal prosecution.

It alleged funds have been raised by the two companies through a vast network of lakhs of commission agents spread all over the country who were being paid hefty commissions for luring the investors.