Ponzi Business is Financial Terrorism: High Court [Read Judgment]

Expressing serious concern over allurement of susceptible investors through attractive schemes & making windfall gains, the Odisha HC has compared the ponzi business to no less than money laundering. “The offence of money laundering is nothing but an act of financial terrorism that poses a serious threat only to the financial system of the country but also to the integrity & sovereignty of a nation.

The modus operandi adopted while transferring such prodigious sum of ill-gotten wealth with the singular intention of concealing the original source of funds & to project the tainted money as untainted ex facie constitute the offence of money laundering,” Justice SK Panigrahi stated while rejecting the bail petition of one of the accused persons connected with ponzi firm M/s Fine Indisales Pvt. Ltd.

Justice Panigrahi stated that the firm not only criminally conspired & cheated the depositors but also lured them into the ponzi scheme with a rogue mindset. “This sort of an economic demonology at the hands of the firm, its directors & shareholders has been instrumental in making a windfall gain of about `703 crore as revealed from their own records,” he observed. “The offences, such as this, are committed with a deliberate design with an eye on personal profit & often shown to be given scant regard for a sordid residuum left behind to be borne by the unfortunate starry-eyed petty investors.

The offenders often target the unsuspecting, rural & economically distressed populations of our State, who while hoping for a dreamy return, part with their hard-earned monies,’ Justice Panigrahi said. “The perpetrators of such deviant schemes promise utopia to their unsuspecting investors & are grossly unmindful of untold miseries of the faceless multitudes who are left high & dry & consigned to the flames of suffering,” the judge added in his 21-page judgment.

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