MADURAI: The Madras High Court (Madurai Bench) has directed the CBI to probe a multi-crore economic offence allegedly involving senior police officers, employees of nationalised banks and staff of multinational companies.
Allowing a petition filed by a Madurai-based businessman K Balakumar, Justice S Vaidyanathan said a CBI probe is necessitated considering the gravity of offences, the volume of money misappropriated, the manner in which the offences were committed and the involvement of people in influential positions.
Balakumar submitted that he was running agencies dealing with the Pepsi Co India Holdings Pvt Ltd and Hindustan Unilever Company including transport carriers for transporting the goods of these companies. In 1997, he appointed one Ganeshkumar as manager to take care of the business affairs.
In 2010, he learnt that I-T returns were not filed for his companies and questioned Ganeshkumar, who managed to escape. When he checked the accounts, he found crores of rupees misappropriated from the accounts maintained with Canara Bank, Union Bank of India, ICICI Bank and HSBC. He also discovered Ganeshkumar had opened new bank accounts and transferred the cash from his companies illegally by colluding with the bank officers. By using the sales tax TIN number of the petitioner’s company, the amount was diverted to the accounts of the MNCs and they too supplied stocks for the received sum and delivered to the firm owned by Ganeshkumar.