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I have no Swiss bank account: Ketan Parekh

The Bombay high court on Thursday reserved till Friday its judgement on anticipatory bail plea of Ketan Parekh, stock broker and prime accused in the multi-billion-rupee pay order scam, who is fearing arrest on fresh charges of siphoning off huge amount of money from India to his Swiss bank account.

The verdict was reserved by Justice A B Palkar.

Meanwhile, Ketan Parekh filed an affidavit contending that he did not have any account in any Swiss bank and refuted CBI allegations that millions of Swiss francs were deposited therein.

Parekh had also filed a petition earlier in the wake of reports which indicated that his Swiss bank account had been frozen following a request from Interpol at the behest of CBI.

Fearing arrest, he moved the court for anticipatory bail.

On Thursday, Parekh categorically denied CBI's claim that he had siphoned off money allegedly acquired from the scam involving funds of Madhavpura Mercantile Co-operative Bank.

The Central Bureau of Investigation had alleged on July 5 that this money was deposited in a Swiss bank.

Parekh's counsel Mahesh Jethmalani argued that his client had already been arrested and kept in custody for 56 days in regard to pay order scam involving Rs 1.37 billion.

Hence his custodial interrogation was not required and he could not be arrested again for offences relating to the same transaction.

Additional Solicitor General Harish Salve justified Ketan Parekh's custodial interrogation saying his arrest was being sought in regard to a different transaction. He prayed for dismissal of Parekh's anticipatory bail petition.

In a rejoinder, CBI said though Parekh was not cited as an accused in the case involving fraud on MMCB, the complaint had alleged that ten of the 19 accounts pertained to Ketan Parekh whose sum total outstanding worked out to Rs 8 billion.

Hence, he was definitely an accused in the FIR. CBI said allegations in the two complaints were totally different. In the first case, the investigation was complete and chargesheet had been filed. The second case involved wider scope of investigation and therefore probe was not over.

CBI said that during pendency of probe into the second complaint, it had received information from Swiss authorities that they were investigating the case of fraud in relation to an account of one Ketan Parekh and had felt that the funds therein were likely to be of Indian origin.

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