The Central Crime Branch (CCB) police on Friday raided the office of India Infoline Finance Limited (IIFL) at Crimson Square in Cubbon Park police limits and recovered 63 kg of gold ornaments and seized several documents.
The police have taken a few people into custody for illegal operations.
They were all middlemen who were selling the gold violating standard norms. They were selling the gold at 80 per cent of the actual price. They had issued advertisements in media and collected the gold, promising of auctioning. The content of the advertisements was vague and misleading.
They had promised to hold auctions at all taluk centres. Nobody was aware of such an initiative. They breached the promises made and conducted the auction in just one room. Only three persons attended the auctioning process, said the police.
There were a lot of discrepancies in the rates quoted. The auctioning process was highly suspicious. They had not maintained files of the activities held. It is not known how they managed to store such a huge quantity of gold, the police added.
“The investigation just began now. It takes at least a week to understand how the trio were operating. The IIFL office is said to be operating for the last four years in Bangalore,” said DCP (Crime) Abhishek Goyal.
Joint Commissioner (Crime) Hemanth Nimbalkar said the preliminary inquiry had revealed that the head of a branch had maintained a file which did not have base price of the gold. The file did not have signatures of customers. The CCTV cameras have failed to generate audio. The gold was sold in bulk and there was no system of returning excess money to customers. Moreover, a lot of customers are not traceable, he added.
“This will be a major breakthrough in functioning of gold loan companies and frauds involved,” he said
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