Former president of Calcutta Stock Exchange and one of the ‘main’ accused in last year’s Rs 120 crore CSE scam Dinesh Kumar Singhania was arrested on Wednesday from his Salt Lake residence. Singhania who was not traceable so far was a leading figure in the payment crisis in 2001.“We have arrested Dinesh Kumar Singhania from his Salt Lake residence,” Deputy Commissioner of Police Soumen Mitra told PTI. Singhania was president of the exchange for two terms and also a director when the scam was revealed in March, 2001, Mitra said.The police had earlier arrested nearly half-a-dozen brokers in connection with the scam. Former Stock Holding Corporation MD BV Gaud is also cooling his heels in the jail for going out of the way to help brokers. Some of the arrested brokers are connected with Ketan Parekh.The adjourned annual general meeting of the Calcutta Stock Exchange scheduled on Thursday is likely to be stormy with brokers mulling a forced adjournment for an indefinite period. “Though we have not yet finally chalked out the strategy, an attempt to create a consensus is being made so that the AGM can be adjourned for an indefinite period,” a CSE broker said.“We are also planning to approach the exchange for convening an extraordinary general meeting for appointing an audit committee to go into the details of utilisation of the Settlement Guarantee Fund following last year’s Rs 120 crore payment crisis,” they said.The 79th AGM of the exchange was postponed till tomorrow on November 14 following alleged ‘indifferent’ attitude of the management sub-committee headed by Chairman Supriya Gupta and subsequent opposition by brokers. “The authorities were only interested in passing balance sheet for 2001-02 and were not willing to hear our grievances.”They did not have any explanation on how the SGF fund was used and who major beneficiaries were,” a broker said. Since there was no explanation in the Annual Report of 2001-02 on the use of the SGF, the brokers were planning to appoint an audit committee to probe the circumstances that led to withdrawal of funds from SGF.But such a committee could be appointed only through an EGM, and so “we will try to postpone the AGM till the report of the audit committee is submitted,” a broker said. Brokers also alleged that the authorities were also willing to share what transpired at the meeting between a CSE delegation and the SEBI Chief on November 12 over waiver of interest on turnover tax and the future strategy to be adopted in view of rejection of introducing derivatives trading platform through a subsidiary route.CSE Secretary P K Ray said the rowdiness of the brokers forced adjournment of the AGM on Nov 14. “We wanted to place the agenda of the meeting and then discuss, but brokers were not willing to continue.”
