Citibank to compensate fraud-hit investors
17 Jan 2011
Citibank, whose Gurgaon branch employee Shivraj Puri is accused of a Rs400-crore fraud, on Saturday said that it is working towards providing "fair compensation" to its affected customers.
The bank has been in touch with its impacted customers and is fully committed to safeguarding their legitimate interests, it said in a statement from Mumbai.
"As we have stated earlier, we identified suspicious transactions at our Gurgaon Branch in early December and immediately reported the matter to law enforcement and regulatory authorities. We have since been in contact with our impacted customers and are committed to safeguarding our customers' legitimate interests," the statement said.
Puri is accused of luring high net worth individuals to invest in a bogus investment scheme on the pretext of getting them high returns, while in fact he diverted the funds to the stock market, where he is said to have lost a large proportion of them.
On Friday, he was remanded in 14 days judicial custody (till 28 January) by a Gurgaon court.
He was initially taken into seven days police custody on 30 December 2010 after the scam was detected. Later, the police remand of Puri was extended for six days on 6 January and subsequently for two days on 12 January.