Two more arrested in UPPCL-DHFL scam in UP

Two persons representing a bogus brokerage firm have been arrested in connection with the multi-crore UP Power Corporation Ltd (UPPCL) scam in which the provident funds of employees were invested in a tainted private firm.

Alok Garg and Mahesh Gupta are deputy directors of bogus brokerage firm SMC which had managed the investments from the UPPCL into Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Ltd (DHFL).

The arrests were made two days ago by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) which is investigating the case.

With this, the total number of arrests in the UPPCL-DHFL scam has gone up to 19.

The EOW had earlier arrested seven officials in the scame in which Rs 4,122 crore was illegally parked with private lender DHFL.

Those arrested also include a senior DHFL official, a chartered accountant and the owners of bogus brokerage firms.

While Rs 4,122 crore was invested in DHFL as unsecured term deposits by the two trusts managing the provident fund of the power corporation employees between March 2017 and December 2018, about Rs 2,267 crore is still to be repaid by the company, which has been barred by the Bombay High Court from making fresh repayments.

One of the arrested persons, Amit Prakash, had served as the regional sales manager of DHFL in Lucknow and was responsible for empanelling firms and individuals as brokers/brokerage firms. He has been accused of criminal complicity with suspended UPPCL official P.K. Gupta and his son Abhinav for facilitating high-value brokerages.

The other arrested persons including Manoj Kumar Agarwal, Chawla, Sanjay Kumar, Jain and Giri had either floated bogus brokerage firms or acted as conduits for taking hefty commissions from DHFL for the term deposits made by the UPPCL trusts.

Last month, the state's Yogi Adityanath government had undertaken to ensure the payment of outstanding investments with DHFL, in case the tainted non-banking financial company failed to fulfill its commitment.

According to the UP Government Order (GO), the state would first harness legal avenues to secure the PF investment in DHFL, failing which the UPPCL would be asked to arrange funds out of its own resources to repatriate the corpus. In case, the power utility also failed to mobilise funds, the state government would offer an interest-free loan to the UPPCL to make up for the purported loss.

Meanwhile, the state has also started the process of disinvesting the PF corpus in two other NBFCs, namely, LIC Housing Finance and PNB Housing Finance, which would later be invested in other public sector financial institutions.

The 45,000-odd UPPCL employees had long been demanding the Adityanath government to issue a gazette notification undertaking to ensure repayment. DHFL is currently being probed by the Enforcement Directorate for money laundering.

( With inputs from IANS )