Enforcement Directorate conducted searches in Delhi, Gurgaon, Faridabad and Ambala in UP yesterday.
The Enforcement Directorate or ED has arrested an agent of a Chandigarh-based company and seized assets worth Rs 4.18 crore in connection with its money laundering probe in a Rs 600 crore ponzi scam case.
The Enforcement Directorate had conducted searches in Delhi, Gurgaon, Faridabad and Ambala in Haryana, and Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh in this case yesterday.
The central probe agency, in a statement issued Saturday, said an absconding agent of the alleged chit fund firm under scanner - Kamal K Bakshi - has been arrested under sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and was yesterday produced in a Chandigarh court.
The court sent him to 14 days' custody.
The case, the ED said, pertains to thousands of investors who were "systematically lured and cheated to the tune of more than Rs 600 crore by floating ponzi or pyramid schemes assuring exorbitant returns".
"Fixed deposit receipts, immovable property papers, jewellery and high-end cars estimated to be valued at Rs 4.18 crore have been seized after the searches," the ED said.
It said the alleged "mastermind" of the scheme is a Malaysian identified as Mugundhan Gangam who floated two firms - Ms Unipay 2U Marketing Private Limited and Unigateway2U Trading Private Limited - in India.
The man is suspected to be hiding in Malaysia now after he slipped out from the country, the ED said.
Describing the modus operandi of the alleged cheating in this case, the agency said the early investors of the ponzi schemes floated by the firm were paid exorbitant returns in order to win over their confidence.
"When thousands of people across the country invested crores of rupees in the said ponzi schemes, the companies stopped the payouts or monthly returns (since October, 2010) and gradually siphoned off crores of rupees of investors," it said.
"The company manipulated by using a web of bank accounts and layering of money through a plethora of such accounts," the ED alleged.
Assets worth Rs 1.63 crore have also been attached in this case under PMLA, it said, even as the agency is probing the role of another agent of the two firms identified as Arvind Kumar Singh.
The agency had registered a criminal FIR in the case, based on an earlier complaint of other central investigative agencies.