Goldman Sachs VP embezzles money for poker, arrested

A senior executive of Goldman Sachs was on Tuesday arrested for illegally transferring Rs 38 crore from company funds to his foreign bank accounts, misusing the login IDs of his employees.

The money swindling came to light when the employees got a whiff of the transactions and reported the matter to their higher-ups a week ago. An internal inquiry was initiated during which it was found that Ashwani Jhunjhunwala, vice-president (Foreign Exchange and Equity Settlements), had made the transactions.

A complaint of criminal breach of trust and cheating by impersonation was filed by the company’s legal head Abhishek Parsheera with the Marathahalli police on Sunday. The police arrested him on Tuesday after he admitted he swindled the money to pay back debts incurred while gambling online.

In the police complaint, Parsheera said Jhunhunwala accessed the computers of his juniors — Gaurav Mishra, Abhishek Yadav and Sujith Appaiah — on the pretext of giving them training, and later sent them away to fetch water and snacks. He then transferred the funds to the account of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

Police inquiries revealed the accused had consulted Vedanth, a terminated employee, to commit the fraud. Vedanth was sacked on similar charges and Jhunjunwala had sought his advice.

Police said Jhunjunwala had incurred huge debts by playing Poker game online and he committed the fraud to clear the debts. They have taken him into custody to recover the money. Goldman Sachs said it has dismissed Jhunjunwala from service.