BENGALURU: Former Indian cricketer Rahul Dravid has filed a police complaint against the ponzi scheme run by the city-based Vikram Investment company. The company has duped more than 800 investors of over Rs 500 crore.
Though there were reports that many well known sports personalities, including Dravid, badminton player Saina Nehwal and former All England champion Prakash Padukone, were among the duped, but none of them had either confirmed or filed a complaint.
According to sources on Friday, at around 2.30 pm, Dravid filed a complaint at the Sadashivanagar police alleging he was cheated of Rs 4 crore.
He stated that in 2014, Sutram Suresh, a former sports journalist, approached him and persuaded him to invest in their schemes.
After he made his first investment, he received good returns in 2015. Suresh convinced him to invest more and assured good returns.
Dravid invested Rs 20 crore, out of which he received Rs 16 crore so far, but after 2017 they stopped giving him any returns.
The ponzi scheme came to light after P.R. Balaji, a businessman who owns Balaji Agarbathi Company, filed a complaint with Banashankari police against the company for cheating him of '11 crore.
The Banashankari police have so far arrested five accused, including Raghvendra Srinath, the Managing Director of the company and the main accused, his associates Nagaraju, Narasimhamurthy, Prahalad and Sutram Suresh.
Raghavendra’s wife Sunitha, who is one of the directors of the company, is currently absconding.
Raghvendra was produced before the court on Saturday and has been remanded to the judicial custody, while the other four were remanded to judicial custody on Friday.
The police on Thursday raided the Vikram commodities and Vikram logistics company in Chennai and had taken Raghvendra Srinath to the company premises to gather more information. The police have also found out that he was running an oil factory in Chennai and have seized the factory.
On Friday, the police had also taken Raghavendra to his house in Banashankari and Malleswaram and seized documents related to the scam.
The police claims it has seized properties worth crores of rupees and assured the investors would get around 80% of the money back.
