Taking sheen off white-collar crime

​Hyderabad: The jewellers, who were arrested on Wednesday on a charge of fabricating 5,200 advance receipts in the name of fictitious customers to show if they had sold Rs 97.85 crore worth of gold, could have believed in their ability to wriggle out of wrong-doing. They could have thought that they had all the right connections and resources to go ahead.

But it seems that their calculation has gone wrong, according to police. The Kailash Chand Gupta of Musaddilal Jewellers had committed a grave white-collar crime in their bid to convert black money into white.

It may be recalled the Income Tax officials had filed a case with the Central Crime Station (CCS) police after they had found that the management of Musaddilal Jewelers had created 5,200 advance receipts in the name of fictitious customers to show that Rs 97.85 crore worth gold was sold in just three hours after the union government announced demonetization of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 currency notes on November 8.

During investigation, CCS police claimed to have found that the fictitious receipts were created to legitimise the black money already in store with Guptas. And this was done with just two employees in each outlet and one among the two was the director himself, a senior police official told The Hans India.

Even if all the four employees, including the directors, generated receipts quickly, about 960 could be generated in three hours – say one receipt for 15 seconds. But in this case, they had generated 5,200 receipts, the official said.

Further, the Guptas had produced identity cards, including Aadhaar cards, purported to be those of customers from Bengaluru, Mumbai and even Delhi. They claimed that these customers had purchased jewellery from Musaddilal stores after landing in Hyderabad soon after announcement of demonetisation of high-value currency.

The police suspected that it was practically not possible, the official said. Also, it was found that the Guptas had created a receipt in the name of a woman who never visited any of the Musaddilal stores. She had only two currency notes of Rs 500 denomination on the day when they were demonetised, the official said.

Interestingly, the Guptas, in their hurry to commit the white- collar fraud, did not even think that every customer would not make purchases for same amount of money. The fictitious receipts showed that each customer had purchased gold worth Rs 1.87 lakh, the official said.

Further, Guptas had allegedly manipulated the records of Registrar of Companies to change the names of the directors apparently to save the female directors from going to prison, the official said.

It appears that the Guptas had forgotten that there was no such thing as a perfect crime, the official said, adding that the Guptas are now ready to pay Rs 75 crore as tax following the arrest of the managing director Kailash Chand Gupta.

“It is the job of Income Tax and the Enforcement Directorate to take a decision on collecting tax and imposing penalty. We are only concerned with the crime perpetrated by Guptas,” the police said.