Five booked over unregistered partnership  firms, transactions worth Rs 16,180 crore 

The economic offences wing (EOW) of Thane City police has begun an investigation into a multi-crore fraud after a case was registered against a group of people allegedly found involved in illegally setting up unregistered partnership firms using forged and bogus documents and defrauding the government.

As many as 260 bank accounts were found linked to these illegally formed partnership firms and transactions worth Rs 16,180 crore were seen being carried out between these accounts.

According to Thane police, a few months ago, they initiated an investigation after an unidentified person hacked into the software of payment gateway company Safex payout and carried out a fraud of Rs 25 crore. A case of hacking and cyber fraud was then filed by the legal advisor of the company with the Shrinagar police station. The Thane police cyber cell was probing the case.

During the investigation, it was revealed that Rs 1.39 crore was fraudulently transferred into an account held by Riyaal Enterprises, which has offices in Vashi and Belapur in Navi Mumbai.  Police searched these offices recently and found documents for multiple bank accounts and contract agreements.

 After close scrutiny of the documents, it was revealed that at one address, five partnership firms were registered in different people’s names using forged and bogus documents.

 When employees of Riyaal Enterprises were questioned, details of 250 bank accounts and various notarised agreements of partnership firms were found, police said. “When details of these bank accounts were obtained, it was found that transactions worth Rs 16,180 crore were carried out using these bank accounts over a period of time,” said an officer of Thane police.

Some of the transactions show that money was also sent abroad, the officer said adding the government was defrauded by opening bank accounts in the names of various unregistered partnership firms using false documents.

Police have suo motu registered a case at Naupada police station against suspects Sanjay Singh, Amol Andhale alias Aman, Kedar alias Sameer Dighe, Jitendra Pandey, Navin, and others in the case by the government.

 The accused are booked under sections 420, 409, 467, 468, 120(B), 34 of the Indian Penal Code, and 66(C) and 66(D) of the Information Technology Act. The EOW officials are further investigating the matter, said a DCP rank officer.