The first arrest within Ashneer Grover’s family has taken place in the BharatPe fraud case.
Deepak Gupta, the husband of BharatPe founder Ashneer Grover’s wife’s sister, has been arrested by the Economic Offences Wing. The arrest has been made in the case which allegedly involved the misappropriation of investor funds by then-BharatPe CEO Ashneer Grover and his family. Last month, a vendor named Amit Kumar Bansal had been arrested by the Economic Offences Wing for being a part of a non-existent firm which had allegedly received fraudulent payments of Rs. 72 crore from BharatPe.
“Deepak Gupta is currently being kept at Mandir Marg Police station. He will be produced infront of CJM, Saket Court where Police will seek Police remand of the accused,” a person close to the developments told Moneycontrol.
The arrest is a result of an investigation into a criminal complaint filed by BharatPe against founder and CEO Ashneer Grover, his wife Madhuri Grover, Madhuri Grover’s brother Shwetank Jain, Ashneer Grover’s father-in-law Suresh Jain, and Ashneer Grover’s brother-in-law Deepak Gupta.
The accused had allegedly defrauded BharatPe by creating fake companies and billing BharatPe for non-existent recruitment services. These fake companies had created fake invoices and had been paid from the company funds as consultant fees for recruiting senior employees. But BharatPe had alleged that these employees had no knowledge of being recruited by these consultant firms, and the firms were created by then-BharatPe CEO Ashneer Grover to siphon funds from the company. Incidentally, Ashneer Grover’s wife Madhuri Grover was the Director of Controls at BharatPe, and the fake firms had been created in the names of her relatives.
BharatPe had accused Ashneer Grover and his family of causing losses to BharatPe worth Rs. 81 crore through illegitimate payments to bogus HR consultants, inflated and undue payments through pass-through vendors connected to the accused, sham transactions in input-tax credit and payment of penalty to Goods and Services Tax (GST) authorities, illegal payments to travel agencies, forged invoices and destruction of evidence.
The ongoing investigation has previously had a direct impact on Ashneer Grover as well. Last year, Grover and his wife were stopped at Delhi airport as they were trying to board a flight to New York, and were prevented from leaving the country. But with Grover’s brother-in-law now under arrest, things seem to be rapidly turning south for the BharatPe founder.