Citibank scam: Anticipatory bail of senior Puri rejected

Gurgaon, Jan 13 (PTI) A local court today rejectedanticipatory bail plea of Raghuraj Puri, father of ShivrajPuri, alleged mastermind of the Rs 400 crore Citibank fraud.

After the plea was rejected, Gurgaon Police CommissionerS S Deswal said, "We will arrest him (Raghuraj Puri) soon".

Shivraj Puri, who worked as a relationship manager inCitibank, is already in police custody.

While opposing the anticipatory bail plea, the publicprosecutor said Raghuraj Puri is an accomplice in the case.

The council said Rs 50 crore of the scam money wereinvested by Shirvarj Puri in Norman Martin. Raghuraj Puri isone of the directors in the firm.

On the other hand, Sartaj Baswana, council for RaghurajPuri, argued that the plea should be granted, as his client''sname was not in the FIR. He also claimed Raghuraj Puri hasnothing to with son''s business.

However, the anticipatory bail plea was rejected byAdditional District and Sessions Judge Subhash Goel.

Shivraj Puri is accused of luring about 40 high networthindividuals and corporate entities to invest in bogus schemeson the promise of unusually high returns and diverted theirmoney to stock markets.

The investors have reportedly suffered a loss of about Rs400 crore.

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.

A senior official of Hero Corporate Services SanjayGupta, has also been named as a co-accused in the fraud forallegedly getting Rs 20 crore commission from Puri in lieu ofarranging investments.

Vikram Pandit, the Indian-born global CEO of Citibankand its Chairman William R Rhodes, were also named in aseparate FIR by investor Sanjeev Aggrawal, who lost about Rs33 crore.