Citibank fraud: If guilty, why did he invest his own Rs 5 crore, asks Sanjay Gupta's wife

GURGAON: Hours after Gurgaon police arrested Sanjay Gupta, associate vice president of Hero Corporate Services, for his role in the Rs 300-crore Citibank fraud, his wife Archana claimed that her husband had nothing to do with Puri and that he was just being made a scapegoat .

“I have met Puri just once and my husband had told me that he is very influential. He told me that he was the grandson of a former RBI governor,” Archana told TOI.

Archana trashed reports that alleged Gupta was a co-conspirator in the racket. “He only thought of earning a good profit for his employer through this scheme falsely floated by Puri under the Citibank banner,” said Archana, who is a microbiologist .

“Why did Puri sit over his (Gupta’s ) name and suddenly came out with it? If my husband would have been really involved in the scam, he would not have invested his hardearned Rs 5 crore in the fake scheme,” said Archana.
According to Archana, her husband called them on Sunday night around 10pm from the DLF-II police station and told her that he had been cleared by the police and that they could take him back home.

“However, when my brother-inlaw reached the police station around 10pm on Sunday, he was asked to wait for two hours since some final formalities had to be completed. They waited till 2am after which the police told them that they should come back on Monday at 10am and take Sanjay back. We were made to wait again on Monday morning and told that the SHO was asleep since the interrogation lasted till 4am,” she said. Later on Monday, police arrested Gupta and produced him in a city court.

Archana said that Puri had called her husband sometime in May last year to invest in the new scheme which he claimed would benefit his employer. Finding the offer lucrative, Gupta made an investment and was given a commission in return, confirmed Archana Gupta.

“However, he (Sanjay) was never interested to take the money as commission and Puri forced him to do so. He has invested Rs 5 crore of that amount and returned another Rs 2.5 crore to the bank. Sanjay had also asked why the bank did not deduct TDS (tax deduction at source) on such huge sums of money . Since he saw huge profits, he also introduced his friends/colleagues to Puri,” she claimed.