Earlier this week, the Enforcement Directorate (ED), India's law enforcement and economic intelligence agency has conducted searches at many premises associated to the senior officials at Religare Enterprises (REL), including its chairperson Rashmi Saluja and seized many documents, according to a media report.
The media report stated that among the documents are the demat and bank accounts of these officials which also include chairperson Saluja. As part of the search operations, the premises of several top officials, including Religare's CFO Nitin Aggarwal, group general counsel Nishant Singhal, and Religare Finvest's COO Chirag Jain, were also covered, the media report added.
Notably, the investigation is centred around allegations of fund misappropriation from Religare Finvest, a non-banking financial company (NBFC) under the Religare Group umbrella, according to sources.
Vaibhav Gawli, an office assistant at a pet café in Mumbai, filed a first information report (FIR) alleging the siphoning of funds from Religare Finvest. He accused the former REL promoters Shivinder Singh and Malvinder Singh of making an open offer to acquire a 26 per cent stake in REL. The complainant filed the FIR when the prices of the stocks started to report a decline. He claimed that he had invested in 500 stocks of REL at Rs 239 on 13 October 2023.
