Citi fraud: Puri''s remand further extended till Jan 14

Gurgaon, Jan 12 (PTI) A local court today extended policeremand of Shivraj Puri, the main accused in the alleged Rs 400crore Citibank fraud, by 2 more days till January 14 as policeis yet to recover iPad considered to be vital evidence.

The Chief Judicial Magistrate D N Bhardwaj remanded Puriin police custody for two more days after public prosecutorsaid that police needed more time to gather evidence andverification of data gathered by chartered accountants.

Puri, who was a Relationship Manager at Citibank''sGurgaon branch, was arrested by the police last month afterthe Rs 400-crore scam was detected. He was remanded in policecustody for seven days, which was extended by 6 days onJanuary 6.

Police, sources said, are keen to get hold of Puri''s iPadwhich could provide vital clues about the details of moneytransactions and contacts of Puri.

He is accused of luring high networth individuals toinvest in bogus schemes on the promise of unusually highreturns and diverted their money to stock markets.

According to Citibank lawyer Harish Malhotra, Puri hasalso admitted that his father Raghuraj Puri was an accompliceand he invested about Rs 50 crore in Norman Martin in whichhis father is a director.

Meanwhile, anticipatory bail plea of Raghuraj Puriwould come up for hearing tomorrow.

Most of the funds were invested by Puri into Niftyoptions -- a derivative product with the NSE benchmark indexNifty as underlying security, where the investor has noobligation to take the delivery and needs to pay only marginmoney.

In this derivative, investors bet on upward or downwardmove of Nifty and returns depend on accuracy of such bets.

Victims of the Citibank fraud include Hero Grouppromoters (Rs 250 crore) and Helion Advisors Managing DirectorSanjeev Aggarwal (Rs 33 crore).