The Citi never sleeps

To add to the latest in the scams front is the one by shivraj puri, a manager in Citibank, gurgaon branch.

The media has been going to town with an initial swindle of 400Cr which now stands at 300Cr. This is sensationalism at its best.

The issues are:

1. what was the purpose for which the investors gave their money to Citibank ?

2. was there anything in the documents wherein the investors gave rights to Puri to use the funds on their behalf ?

3. finally when he was doing all these trades why wasnt the brokerage houses questioning him on the sources of his funds as required by SEBI?

No media / press person has been writing about the above which i find very disturbing as there seems a total lack of "informed" writers OR even bigger a total lack of "informed readers" !!

The bigger worry is the way investigative agencies are dealing with the case. Common sense suggests that Puri be allowed to close out his positions. The minute public knowledge of his positions are made known to others they can take opposite positions (as his accounts are frozen) and thus bleed him to death. This ultimately hits the investors whose money is invested in the first place!! My fear seems justified as the fall in the markets in the past week seem too orchestrated and maybe, just maybe it is because the frozen positions of Puri is "private" knowledge to "few" in the "know" and they have already taken these opposite positions.

The transparent way would have been to just transfer these positions to a SEBI appointed trader/ broker etc and tell him to close these positions at the earliest (1-2 days) and then to freeze the funds in a bank account till the investigation is over and it is determined how much money goes to each investor.

Guess everybody is sleeping at work and that is why the Citi never sleeps as it is too worried for its future..