The Economic Offences Wing's (EOW) investigation into the alleged fraud at payments firm BharatPe has found a host of unexplained payments made to allegedly fake human resource consultancies by co-founder Ashneer Grover, his wife and the company's former head of controls Madhuri Jain Grover as well as Madhuri Jain's family members, sources have said.
The accused allegedly used backdated invoices to move funds from BharatPe's accounts for payment of commissions for recruitment work, a status report filed by the EOW in the Delhi High Court stated.
At least Rs 7.6 crore was paid to allegedly fake HR consultancies, while Rs 1.66 crore was paid as penalty to goods and services tax (GST) authorities. Another Rs 71.76 crore was allegedly siphoned off via fictitious transactions.
The total amount alleged to have been involved in these transactions could be well over Rs 81 crore, as the EOW investigation is still going on.
The EOW status report says, "During the course of investigation, scrutiny of A/c No. [redacted] (belonging to alleged Madhuri Jain/Grover) revealed that she got huge amount of approx. Rs 5 crore, Rs 3 crore and Rs 2 crore from her father Suresh Jain, mother Santosh Jain and brother Shwetank Jain, respectively."
Madhuri Jain, the former head of controls at BharatPe, was fired in 2022 after a forensic audit revealed several irregularities. Subsequently, Ashneer Grover resigned as CEO in March 2022.
"Further, scrutiny of account no. [redacted] (belonging to alleged Ashneer Grover) revealed that the petitioner Ashneer Grover transferred a sum of Rs 46 crore (approx.) in the account of his father Ashok Grover from 2019 to 2022. These huge transactions are to be verified and their purpose/end user to be ascertained," the EOW said.
The EOW had filed a first information report (FIR) earlier this year under eight sections of the Indian Penal Code, including criminal breach of trust, cheating and dishonesty, and forgery.
BharatPe, in its complaint, alleged that Ashneer Grover and his family caused damages of about Rs 81.3 crore through illegitimate payments to allegedly fake human resource consultants, among other charges.
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