The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Mumbai police has filed a supplementary charge-sheet in the alleged Rs 5,574 crore National Spot Exchange Exchange (NSEL) scam against 63 accused, including 36 companies and 27 individuals. NSEL, 63 Moons Technologies Ltd (formerly Financial Technologies India Ltd (FTIL)), India Bullion Market Association; as well as brokerage firms like Anand Rathi Commodities Ltd, Geofin Comtrade Ltd and India Infoline Commodities Ltd are some of the companies, which defaulted on paying back investors, have been named in the charge sheet.

The officials of these three brokerage firms were arrested in 2015. NSEL is 99.99% owned by 63 Moons Technologies. The second 28,000 pages change-sheet comes five years after NSEL scam came into light in July 2013. The first charge sheet was filed in 2014 against key officials of NSEL, including its founder Jignesh Shah, who was arrested by EOW, in May 2014.

The commodities spot exchange NSEL, promoted by Financial Technologies (now 63 Moons Technologies) faced a payment default of Rs 5600 crore in 2013, which led to approximately 13,000 investors losing their money.

In order to carry out a detailed probe and solve the 5-year-long scam, EOW – which is primarily investigating the case along with some other central agencies – had roped in two government-appointed forensic auditors and a digital forensic auditor. The current charge-sheet also includes 22 GB data.

ALSO READ I 2019 stock market outlook: Buy good stocks, don’t worry about China, US, RBI, says Saurabh Mukherjea

The Indian Express reported citing a senior police officer that some former top office-bearers of NSEL, including Shreekant Javalgekar, have been named in the charge sheet.

“Apart from NSEL, those charged include the companies that produced forged receipts claiming that they had agricultural produce in their godowns that were being traded on the commodities exchange. The probe has revealed that these commodities were only on paper and no actual goods existed in these godowns,” the officer told the newspaper. Besides, NSEL was the mastermind in the scam and it provided the platform to carry out alleged fraudulent trade, he added.

Last month, NSEL had filed a criminal writ petition before the Bombay High Court and blamed the state government of Maharashtra for not taking any action against trading members and brokers, or attaching their assets.