Jignesh Shah, Vice-Chairman of the troubled National Spot Exchange Ltd, was grilled along with the arrested former CEO of the exchange Anjani Sinha, for over three hours on Friday by the Economic Offences Wing of the Mumbai Police.
Addressing media persons, Joint Commissioner (Crime) of Police Himanshu Roy said Sinha had given a lot of information during his interrogation and this had to be corroborated.
Shah was called to the office and both were questioned jointly, he said. Sinha held Shah responsible for the scam and said he was aware of the happenings in the exchange.
He has ‘spilled the beans’ in the case and, therefore, it was important that Shah ‘listens’ to what Sinha has to say.
Roy said when people involved in a scam are called individually, they say things which are unverifiable at that point of time. They tend to blame other persons for the crimes. For getting to the truth, they have to be confronted with each other.
A confrontation between the persons involved in the case has given an insight to the police into the functioning of the exchange and has ironed out discrepancies in statements of the accused, he said.
Roy said NSEL did not follow any norms while selecting the borrowers. There was no background check while lending large sum of money.
NSEL did not operate as an exchange, only the money was lent at a certain rate of interest,
Amit Mukherjee, an Assistant Vice-President of exchange, who has been arrested, used to identify companies with non-performing assets and then approach these companies for loans, he said.
Roy also added that NSEL investors’ forum had complained against the auditors of the exchange and soon they would be giving their complaint in writing.
Meanwhile, the EOW has started identifying the properties belonging to the accused and that would be attached under the Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors Act.