By Express News Service BENGALURU: The Marathahalli police have arrested a Vice President of Goldman Sachs Services Pvt. Ltd. and a former employee on charges of siphoning off 5.4 million US dollars, approximately valued at INR 38 crore. Ashwani Jhunjhunwala (36), who was Vice President (Settlements) in the company and a resident of Murugeshpalya, and Vedanth Rungta (28), a former employee of the company and a resident of Bagalur Main Road, are the arrested persons. Abhishek Parsheera, the complainant and Legal Head of the company, has filed a complaint with the Maratthalli police on Sunday, accusing Jhunjhunwala of making fraudulent transactions. He stated that an internal enquiry was conducted about the two alleged fraudulent transactions made on September 4 and it revealed that Ashwani was directly involved in it. “Four persons including Jhunjhunwala were interviewed. The other three reported to Jhujunwala. The three made statements that on the pretext of reviewing their work, Jhunjhunwala took access of their computer systems and specifically asked them to get him water/food, which resulted in each of them being away from their computer systems. One of them also stated that on September 6, Jhunjhunwala asked him to set up a SRS for payment recall." "Since he is new to the firm, he did not understand the process. Jhunjhunwala took control of his system and created the SRS. Gaurav stated that he found this act by Jhunjhunwala to be a bit suspicious and investigated this further along with the help of other colleagues. On the basis of the review, he saw that a third party Standard Settlement Instructions (SSI) was set-up using his credentials." "Since he did not recall setting this up, he got suspicious and escalated the matter. Based on internal investigations, including review of CCTV footage it was ascertained that Ashwani did have control of the computer systems of the three employees, which matches the system time stamp of setting-up the SSI, its authentication and approval, which corresponded with the statements provided by the employees,” the complainant stated. Jhunjhunwala also allegedly admitted to the fraudulent transactions he committed, during the internal enquiry. “In addition, he also admitted that he has losses of approximately Rs. 47 lakh in playing online poker. He admitted to taking a loan of Rs. 25 lakh from a private bank and personal loans from certain individuals. He stated that in July, he had contacted Vedant Rungta, a former employee of Goldman Sachs, via Facebook to establish a relationship and obtain a loan from him. He also mentioned that he knew that Vedant Rungta was a wealthy individual and had perpetrated a fraud against Goldman Sachs. This lead to a dialogue with Vedant and a meeting where Vedant lent Ashwani around Rs. 7 lakh, which was paid towards loans made from individuals,” the complainant alleged. It was also alleged that Vedant asked Jhunjhunwala to perpetrate a fraud by transferring $ 10-12 mn to a third party account in Hong Kong. Jhunjhunwala, who initially refused, accepted to do it as Vedant allegedly told him that he would provide an additional $4000 (INR 3.2 crores) if he facilitated the fraudulent wire transfer. The police, who started the investigation, arrested the duo and also got in touch with the bank concerned and raised a request to stop and prevent the transfer of money. Following the request, the bank has stopped the transfer and transferred the entire amount back to the company. “Preliminary probe has revealed that Rungta was sacked from the company for committing similar offense and Jhunjhunwala, who was in touch with the former, committed the offense taking his help, the police added. Further investigations are on,” DCP (Whitefield) MN Anucheth said.

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