Rajesh Pandey
The Allahabad High Court has pulled up enforcement directorate (ED), serious fraud investigation office (SFIO) and economic offence wing (EOW) for their failure to carry out proper investigation in Shine City company scam, where several crores of funds of investors were siphoned off by the accused persons. While fixing July 1, 2024 as the next date, the court directed the three agencies to file status report showing the progress of the investigation in this matter.
Hearing a writ petition filed by Shriram Ram, a investor of the company, a division comprising Justice Siddharth and Justice Prashant Kumar observed, “This court feels that all these agencies have utterly failed to carry out the investigation properly. The entire investigation has been carried out in most lackadaisical manner. All these investigating agencies are directed to carry out proper investigation against the accused and the companies and further put sincere efforts to find out the trail of all the money”.
The court also directed the ministry of external affairs to file affidavit showing day to day progress about extradition of the fugitive accused.
In the order dated May 31, the court also directed that no further sale deeds shall be executed by the accused persons or their nominees or their managers in favour of any third party. The court also directed the respondent authorities to ensure that none of the person, who is involved in this case shall leave the country.
In this case, the accused started a company in the name of M/s Shine City Infra Project Pvt. Ltd., which was a multilevel marketing company and they also incorporated various other companies into it.
Apart from the aforesaid companies, the accused made a web of companies, under which they were launching various kinds of such schemes, which included certain schemes, which were not legal and were being operated without taking proper permission/licence from the authorities. It is alleged by the petitioner the accused has various other companies, where directors were the close confidante of the accused, and had been used for siphoning off the funds of the investors.
As per the averments made in the bunch of writ petitions, thousands of crores of rupees were collected under various schemes of lacs of investors and the same were illegally taken away by the accused. It has further been alleged that the accused were involved in laundering of money of various mafias including a local mafia namely, Ateeq Ahmad.
Around 284 FIRs were registered against the accused persons. However, it was only after filing of the writ petitions and intervention of this court that few of the accused were arrested, but the main accused Rashid Nasim, who was arrested in Nepal for identical activities, managed to slip out of the country and ran away to Dubai and is staying comfortably there.
