Pune: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) on Thursday night arrested the director of an agriculture-based finance company on the charge of duping over 30 investors of at least Rs15 crore in the past few months.A case of cheating and criminal breach of trust under relevant sections of BNS was registered with the Hadapsar police. The police later invoked charges of the Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors’ (MPID) Act in the case, which was taken over by the EOW.
Deputy commissioner of police (EOW) Vivek Masal told TOI: “We arrested Prashant Gawali (35), a resident of Hadapsar and director of the agriculture-based finance company. He operated from an office on Magarpatta Road in Hadapsar.”He said: “We suspect that the amount of the fraud will increase as the number of victims approaching us with their complaints is rising. The victims are mostly from Pune, Ahilyanagar and Beed districts.” The Hadapsar police had about six months ago registered a case of impersonation against Gawali on the charge of posing as an “honorary agricultural commissioner”. Masal said: “He had floated a finance scheme for farmers and other investors, promising them 10% monthly returns or ‘double returns’ (twice the invested amounts) in 20 months. The farmers and the investors fell for the scheme believing him to be a govt official.“The officer added: “As the company’s director, Gawali claimed that he had earned a good amount of money by exporting agricultural products and promised the farmers to buy their yields for export. To convince his targets, the man told them that export yielded much higher returns instead of selling farm products in the domestic market.” Masal said after collecting money from the investors, Gawali initially paid them returns against their investments. Later, he neither paid them the monthly returns as well as the promised returns on maturity of the invested amounts.
