The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) has registered an FIR against a relationship manager of share trading firm Motilal Oswal for allegedly defrauding the director of a gems and jewellery company of Rs7.5 crore on the pretext of handling his investments. The manager, Vishwanathan Iyer, is accused of siphoning funds from the three demat accounts of Mukesh Shah, 72, who invested Rs15 crore in 2019-20.
Shah, his wife and daughter hold three accounts with Motilal Oswal since 2016. On not getting the expected profits, he contacted Iyer, a senior manager with the firm, in 2019. On Iyer’s advice, Shah traded in the F&O (future and option) commodity and currency derivatives markets by pledging his shares, and made a profit of Rs49.73 lakh by the end of March 2020. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Shah suffered losses but continued to take Iyer’s advice due to earlier trust.
In December 2020, Iyer convinced Shah about a scheme (Unique Investment) and induced him to invest in it. Meanwhile, Shah started receiving emails regarding margin losses from Motilal Oswal but Iyer about this but Iyer asked Shah to ignore this email.asked him to ignore them. When Shah carefully read the detailed statements, he found out that he had suffered a loss of Rs5.34 crore.
Shah asked Iyer to withdraw his money from the scheme but was told that it was time-bound. When Shah checked online he found that no such scheme existed. When Shah called Iyer to return his money, he gave him two cheques of Rs20 lakh and Rs35 lakh but they bounced. Iyer stopped replying to Shah’s calls and emails, following which he complained to EOW, which conducted a preliminary probe before registering an FIR at Dadar police Station.
In a statement, Motilal Oswal said that the transactions were conducted as per the client’s instructions and was regularly sent information with respect to his account with the company. “However, we understand that the client and the ex-employee had some personal dealings outside our company of which we are not aware. These dealings are not in our purview and we cannot comment on them,” the spokesperson replied.
