Citibank scam: Senior Puri's bail plea rejected

A Gurgaon court on Thursday rejected anticipatory bail plea of Raghuraj Puri, father of Shivraj Puri, alleged mastermind of the Rs 400-crore (Rs 4-billion) Citibank fraud.

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

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

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

The council said Rs 50 crore (Rs 500 million) of the scam money were invested by Shirvarj Puri in Norman Martin. Raghuraj Puri is one of the directors in the firm.

On the other hand, Sartaj Baswana, council for Raghuraj Puri, argued that the plea should be granted, as his client's name was not in the first information report.

He also claimed Raghuraj Puri has nothing to with son's business.

However, the anticipatory bail plea was rejected by additional district and sessions judge Subhash Goel.

Shivraj Puri is accused of luring about 40 high networth individuals and corporate entities to invest in bogus schemes on the promise of unusually high returns and diverted their money to stock markets.

The investors have reportedly suffered a loss of about Rs 400 crore.

Most of the funds were invested by Puri into Nifty options -- a derivative product with the NSE benchmark index Nifty as underlying security, where the investor has no obligation to take the delivery and needs to pay only margin money.

A senior official of Hero Corporate Services Sanjay Gupta, has also been named as a co-accused in the fraud for allegedly getting Rs 20 crore (Rs 200 million) commission from Puri in lieu of arranging investments.

Vikram Pandit, the Indian-born global chief executive officer of Citibank and its chairman William R Rhodes, were also named in a separate FIR by investor Sanjeev Aggrawal, who lost about Rs 33 crore (Rs 330 million).