Revoke passports of ‘absconding’ Credforce Asia founders: Investors
LUCKNOW : The 218 investors of Credforce Asia Ltd — a Haryanabased education company accused of committing fraud worth Rs 250 crore — have urged Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath to revoke passports of the firm’s Lucknowbased founder couple Rajeev and Geetika Gupta. Their passports are due for renewal in August next year, a joint letter by the stakeholders who hail from the NCR region and Kolkata to the CM, said.
The investors alleged that Rajeev and his wife had fled abroad after they were accused of fund misappropriation. A writ petition was filed in the Calcutta High Court seeking the issuance of lookout notices against the couple and also to block the renewal of their passport.
Speaking to the press at a Lucknow hotel on Friday, the investors who had subscribed to the company’s issue of compulsorily redeemable preference shares in 2014, said six of them, who had succumbed to serious diseases ever since the company’s fraud came to the fore, did not get back the hard-earned savings that they had parked with the company.
Representing the investors, Aditya Bajoria and Tanvir Dagman said, “Credforce Asia is a company registered in New Delhi and was earlier known as TCG Hamilton. It is headed by CFO and director Rajeev Gupta and his wife Geetika Gupta. Other directors are Sanjeev Shukla and Sanjeev Dhingra.”
“We have requested the CM to get Rajeev and Geetika Gupta, who are in Texas (the US), arrested. Necessary steps to be taken to revoke their passports before they change their nationality,” they added.
They said the company had raised over Rs 70 crore by issuing preference shares to investors, and on March 31, 2018, had about Rs 250 crore in reserves. “The company stopped paying quarterly dividends and maturity dues in December 2019 . The company duped us into investing in the form of preferential shares with a fixed dividend of 12.25 per cent...” The firm’s director and chief financial officer Sanjeev Shukla was arrested by Delhi Police on Sept 27.