With the arrest of Amol Sheth, promoter of Ahmedabad’s once reputed firm Anil Starch, Ahmedabad Crime Branch has finally cracked a two-year-old Rs 1,500 crore scam in fleecing people by luring them with huge returns on their investments.
Police sources claim Sheth has been evading arrest so far using his political connections but now that he has eventually been picked up, more details of the scam would come out.
His arrest has emboldened many more people to come forward and lodge multiple complaints against Sheth and his enterprise. A whopping 700 complaints have been filed against Anil Starch in two years.
An accomplice, Shivprasad Kabra, has also been picked up. Though the crime branch had sought a police remand for 14 days, the court granted a day.
The crime branch started investigating aggressively against Sheth after they received a complaint from Kedar Tambe, a resident of Shilaj. Kedar was convinced to invest Rs 14.5 lakh in a firm named Anil Tradecom on a promise of 12% interest rate for 120 days. He didn’t get anything.
‘Bills of exchange receipts’ as guarantees and advanced bank cheques of profits were provided by the directors of Anil Tradecom Ltd and Siddharth Corn Mart Pvt Ltd.
Amol Seth was also charged with embezzlement by not paying a bill discount of Rs 5 crore for the purchase of maize by his own partners.
Sumit Sheth and Rajan Shah, the partners of Late Slipt company, one of the 6 subsidiaries, have filed a complaint in the CID crime zonal police station that the sub-companies associated with Anil Starch had issued bill discounts of Rs 2.2 crore and Rs 2.75 crore to invest in corn. But Amol transferred the value to his sub-companies.
