Update: Vinay Shah is presently under custody of Revenue department of Nepal for keeping foreign currency beyond permissible limit. Shah was held along with his aide and Nepal origin woman Chanda Thapa. Shah may face one-month imprisonment in Nepal for keeping foreign currency in his possession beyond permissible limit. Shah had chosen to leave for Nepal as Chanda is from Nepal. Shah could also try his best to flea from Nepal in order to settle in some other foreign nation.

Gandhinagar: The Nepal police and Income tax department of the neighboring country have arrested the mastermind of over Rs 200 crore online ad/investment scam of Gujarat, Vinay Shah with foreign currency worth around Rs 30 lakh, Director General of CID-crime Ashish Bhatia said today.

He was nabbed by the local authorities of Nepal as they become suspicious of him due to his extravagant spending in bars, casinos and other such places in Pokhara, one of the main tourist spots in Nepal. He had also reportedly fallen for a local Nepali girl who used to work in Delhi earlier on. His alleged wasteful spending and arrogant and unruly behaviour had attracted the eyes of the locals which in turn brought him to the notice of the authorities leading to his arrest.

Notably Gujarat government had handed over the probe of the sensational ponzi scheme to the state crime on November 14.

Bhatia said that a team of the CID-crime would go to Nepal to take his custody after the completion of the formalities there.

‘He was arrested by the Nepal IT and police under the foreign exchange act of the country. He was in possession of Rs 30 lakh worth of foreign currency including British Pound and US dollars,’ he said.

‘We had gathered information about his possible entry to Nepal and his movement in the country and had also issued a look out notice but he was nabbed by the police and IT authorities of Nepal itself,’ Bhatia added.

The DG-CID-crime also said that the main co-accused in the case and wife of Vinay Shah, Bhargvi has not yet been arrested.

Notably, the CID crime was also competent under the Gujarat Protection of Interest of Depositors (in Financial Establishments) Act, 2003, to recover the scam money from the assets of the accused to compensate it to the victims. An SIT has been constituted for the probe of the scam which as per an estimate has affected thousands of investors.

Shah in a letter earlier had alleged several police officials and others of being the beneficiary of his scam.

Shah had opened an office in Thaltej area of Ahmedabad and allegedly duped numerous people by making them invest in his scheme which claimed to double or more than double different fixed sums collected in the name of running advertisements on two websites created by his company. It also used to give username and password to those who pay a certain amount and claimed to pay also for seeing the advertisement a certain number of times.

Vinay had also made several investors go for sponsored foreign trips.

Allegations were leveled that he had nexus with police and politicians.

CID crime had earlier recovered cash and other items worth over Rs 50 lakh from the residence and offices of Shah here. Apart from cash, over 30 computers, 2 laptops, gold and silver jewelry, 4 swipe machines and other articles and documents were seized. Some of the documents were reportedly pertaining to investment in stock markets.

So far four cases have been lodged against Shah and others in the scam and all of these have now been take over for investigation by the CID-crime. Shah was reportedly nabbed by Nepali authorities on Saturday last and his identity could be established as the accused of the scam later.

DeshGujarat