In a relief to investors of the now defunct National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL), a special court trying the bourse's Rs 5,600-crore payment crisis case, is likely to appoint a liquidator in a week's time, police said on Tuesday.
The Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors Court is likely to appoint a liquidator, who can auction the attached assets worth 90 per cent of the scam value and distribute among the investors.
"A competent authority, who is a liquidator, is likely to be appointed by the MPID court in week's period. The liquidator, who could be a Deputy Collector or any other official with the same rank, will have the authority to sell the frozen movable and immovable assets estimated to be Rs 5,200 crore, through auction," an officer at the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai Police said.
Once the liquidator is appointed, he/she would collect all the documents pertaining to the frozen assets belonging to promoters, directors and defaulters/borrowers, the officer said, adding, "It is up to the liquidator how early he/she auctions the assets and distributes cash among the victims."
The spot commodity exchange has been facing problems in settling payments worth Rs 5,600 crore to over 200 member-brokers, representing 13,000 investor-clients.
After the crisis came to light, an FIR was filed on September 30 last year by the EOW against Jignesh Shah, promoted-director of NSEL, Joseph Massey, another director, and others, charging them with cheating, forgery, breach of trust and criminal conspiracy, among other offences.
The EOW has so far arrested six accused in the scam.
They are former NSEL chief executive Anjani Sinha, two mid-level executives of the exchange Amit Mukherjee and Jay Bahukhundi, NK Proteins managing director Nilesh Patel, Lotus Refineries CMD, and also a film financier, Arun Sharma, and Surender Gupta, managing director of PD Agroprocessors.
NK Proteins and Lotus Refineries were among the biggest NSEL defaulters. A 9,100-page charge-sheet against the first five arrested accused was also filed in January.
However, the charge-sheet did not mention the names of Mr Shah and Mr Massey, who allegedly played key roles in the fraud.
To recover investors' money, the EOW has invoked the MPID Act, which empowers police to attach immovable assets of the accused.
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