Police file charge sheet in NSEL case

The Mumbai Police on Monday filed its final report on the Rs 5,574.35-crore payment crisis at National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL) at a metropolitan magistrate court.

Interestingly, the 9,000-page charge sheet, while naming three persons from NSEL and two borrowers, has not charged media-savvy Jignesh Shah, whose Financial Technologies had promoted the spot commodity bourse that ran into a major payment crisis in July last year.

Briefing the media, Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Himanshu Roy said: “Shah has not been given any kind of clean chit...he has been named as an accused but we are yet to frame charges against him and today's report is just the first to be filed. We will be filing several other charge sheets in the coming days.”

Describing NSEL's former managing director Anjani Sinha as “the brains behind the scam”, the police have charged Amit Mukherjee (NSEL's former assistant vice-president, business development) and Jai Bakhundi (NSEL’s former assistant of warehousing) with receiving kickbacks, besides borrowers Nilesh Patel (N K Proteins’ former managing director) and Arun Kumar Sharma (Lotus Refineries Pvt Ltd) for being part of the conspiracy.

Roy said: “Apart from invoking the Maharashtra Protection of Interests of Depositors Act (MPID), we also want them to be tried under various sections dealing with criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery and breach of trust.”

Besides investigations carried out by the Economic Offences Wing of the Mumbai Police, the Central Bureau of Investigation (banks and securities wing) is also carrying out a parallel probe into the case. It was on July 31 that the settlement crisis at NSEL came to light when the exchange suddenly suspended trading in all but its e-series contracts, which was also shut down a week later.

The trading closure sparked off a furore and the Ministry of Consumer Affairs issued a directive asking the exchange to stop its futures contracts offer, which NSEL was carrying on in violation of all regulations.

NSEL had proposed a settlement of Rs 5,574.35 crore to 148 members and brokers representing 13,000 investors and clients.