Bengaluru police have booked several senior officials from the Karvy group, a private wealth management company.
Among those booked are Karvy Private Wealth CEO Abhijit Bhave along with directors of Karvy Stock Brokers, Karvy Realty India Pvt Ltd and Karvy Capitals. The officials are accused of cheating investors by promising returns of up to 18-20%.
Police took action after nine investors who had allegedly been cheated of Rs 3.81 crore approached Basavanagudi police station with a complaint. The complainants, which include Ketki Shah Talati and her husband Mayank Harshad Talati claimed that they invested Rs. 1.76 crore in 2015 after being promised returns by Srinivas, a relationship manager with Karvy Private Wealth.
"The complainants alleged that Karvy had not arranged a direct interaction with builders with whom they had invested their money and requested legal action against the head and directors of the group," police officials said, as per Times of India.
The complainants alleged that they stopped receiving returns at different points around 2017. According to them, the company cited reasons like demonetisation and GST for the delay in returns.
As per Deccan Herald, the managers had told complainants that investments would be handled by Karvy Private Wealth CEO Abhijit Bhave, Real Estate Head Pravin Garle, Directors Kamodor Partha Sarathi, Yogendar Mika, Ashish Agarwal, Bhagavan Das Narang, regional heads Nithin Sabarwala, Praveenbai Bhagwanji Amlani, Nithin Saksena, Prathivadi Bhayankaram Ramapriyan, Venkatesh Sesha Ravi Prasad Chavali, Mumbai division head Chethan Deherkar and Basavanagudi Branch Vice-President Thomas Stephen.
Karvy Group, in a statement, said that unfavourable market conditions meant that real estate was in a bad phase and that the company is doing everything in its power to recover the money, ".Karvy, in the capacity as a facility Agent, has been making incessant efforts to recover the money from these entities and has been taking various steps to safeguard the interests of the investors and as part of such initiatives, Karvy has provided support to investors by assisting them initiate proceedings against these entities before National Company Law Tribunals (NCLT) at Bangalore, Chandigarh, Mumbai and New Delhi. We submit that these investors, who have complained to Bangalore Police, are aware of the efforts being made by us, and in fact most of them are also party to the said litigations," read the statement.