ED Awarded Custody Of Mahila Empowerment Party Chief Nowhera Shaikh For Running Ponzi Scheme

A special court awarded the Enforcement Directorate (ED) seven-day custody of trio in Hyderabad in connection to the alleged multi-crore Ponzi scheme and Investment fraud scheme which was responsible for the duping many people in Telangana, the Business Standard reports.

Nowhera Shaikh, Molly Thomas and Biju Thomas, were arrested under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The trio was already in jail for three weeks when the ED approached the court for a permit to put them under their custody.

Nowhera Shaikh is the founder of the All India Mahila Empowerment Party (AIMEP) and the Heera group of companies which is closely linked in the Ponzi scheme. Molly Thomas had worked as the personal assistant to Shaikh.

Biju Thomas is the Managing Director of Suvan Technologies Solutions, which developed software for the Heera group and maintained all the account details of the scheme. The group companies had collected around Rs 3,000 crore from 1,72,11 investors, the agency said.

“Heera group is accused of fraudulently collecting investments from lakhs of innocent victims on the promise of providing very high returns of about 36 per cent by indulging in gold trading among others,” ED said.

It is also believed that there were several FIRs against Shaikh and the others by victims of this horrendous scheme from across Hyderabad, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and other states as well as various NRI’s in UAE, Saudi Arabia and other Middle East countries.