30 NSEL warehouses empty, 17 fake: EOW

MUMBAI: The economic offences wing (EOW) recorded the statements of 14 people accused in the Rs 5,600-crore NSEL cheating case. Jignesh Shah of Financial Technologies (FTIL), which owns NSEL, is likely to be summoned on Wednesday.
"We have recorded the statements of some of the accused and will be calling others soon. Many of them wrote to us that they cannot appear within the stipulated five-day time citing health reasons.So far, we have found that the addresses of at least 17 warehouses are bogus. We have searched a total of 62 warehouses so far," said Rajvardhan Sinha, additional commissioner of police, EOW.
Police have till date frozen 64 bank accounts with Rs 21 crore belonging to various people, companies and NSEL. "During the raid, we found that 30 warehouses did not have any goods and were lying empty. Our raids are over and now we are busy scrutinizing the seized documents," Sinha added.
Moreover, it has issued look-out notices to all the airports in the country
against 20 persons so that they cannot flee the country. On September 30, EOW registered an FIR against FTIL that owns NSEL, its office bearers and two dozen private firms for cheating.
There are chances that arrests will begin from mid-October in this case
next week. The police had last week issued notices to 74 people, including those mentioned in the FIR, under section 160 of CrPC (to appear before the investigating officer for statement). The FIR, filed by an investor Pankaj Saraf, named Jignesh Shah, MCX Stock Exchange MD Joseph Massey and auditor Mukesh Shah, among others.
All the accused have been booked for forgery, criminal breach of trust, cheating and criminal conspiracy. As part of the look-out notice procedure, if anyone tries to leave the country, s/he will be detained at the airport.