BENGALURU: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has provisionally attached movable and immovable properties of Ambidant Marketing Pvt Ltd and other accused persons worth over Rs 10 crore in a Ponzi scheme case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.
The attached immovable properties are in the form of land and residential flats in Bengaluru. “The value of immovable properties attached is Rs 8.8 crore, while movable properties worth Rs. 1.4 crore have been attached,” the ED stated.
The Ambidant Marketing Ponzi scam had come to the fore in 2018 where over 10,000 investors, who were offered huge returns of up to 15% per month, were cheated in the name of ‘Islamic banking’ or ‘Halal investment’ . According to the ED, Ambidant was not authorized to collect such funds as it was neither registered with the Reserve Bank of India nor with the Securities and Exchange Board of India under their collective investment scheme.
The ED had initiated investigation into the scam under PMLA on the basis of the FIRs registered by the City police against Ambidant Marketing, its directors and other related persons. According to the ED, Ambidant had “hired agents, who would convince investors to invest in the plan by giving these agents a heavy commission. The fraudulent company earned the trust of gullible investors and they were lured to invest even more, but later returning the money, including the principal amount, was stopped. Initially, the company shared profits with the existing investors out of funds obtained from its new investors,” stated the Directorate.
During the probe, the assets derived out of the above offences were identified and attached by the ED.
The investigation in the Ambindant Ponzi scheme scam was first taken up by the City police and later handed to the Central Crime Branch (CCB), which, in February this year, had submitted the chargesheet against nine accused including former BJP leader and mining baron G Janardhana Reddy, Ambidant founders Syed Fareed Ahmed, his son Syed Afaq Ahmed, and Irfan Mirza. The other accused named in the chargesheet were Vijay Tata, Mehfuz Ali Khan, Ballari Ramesh, Inayat Ullah Wahab and Ashraf Ali. The CCB had stated that 10,564 people had made investments totalling `120 crore in the Ambidant scheme.
Reddy’s close aide Ali Khan was under the scanner of the CCB for allegedly striking a `20-cr deal with Fareed to bail him out from the ED probe. Reddy had denied his involvement in the scam. The CCB had arrested six accused in the Ambidant scam, who were later enlarged on bail.