Ponzi queen Nowhera Shaikh ‘morphed’ photo with Sushma Swaraj to lure clients

HYDERABAD: Nowhera Shaikh and her Heera Group, accused of running a multi-crore ponzi scheme, allegedly used morphed photographs of then external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj to promote their activities. This came to light in the chargesheet filed by Hyderabad police’s Central Crime Station (CCS) against Nowhera and other accused in the over Rs 5,000-crore fraud case in a local court a few days ago.
“In one of the morphed photos, Sushma Swaraj is seen giving away a book ‘The Indian Super 100’ to Nowhera during the minister’s visit to Dubai in 2014,” the CCS said. Hyderabad police now plans to write to the ministry of external affairs (MEA) to get the list of businesspersons who received the book from the minister.
Incidentally, the morphed photographs were used for promotion of Heera Group on their in-house web channel, H-Channel, which used to be supervised by Nowhera’s associate Bijju Thomas to impress prospective customers about their credibility.
Thomas, a native of Kochi in Kerala, had hired professionals to prepare promotional content and software for Heera Group. The MEA event in Dubai was made part of the promotional content.
“Actually, the minister had presented the book to a businessman, but, through morphing, it was shown as if Nowhera was receiving it and the actual receiver was standing behind her. There are three morphed photos,” CCS investigators said.
In the preliminary chargesheet filed against Nowhera and her four associates, the CCS sleuths said that during their investigation they found that Nowhera was managing director of 15 registered companies. Of them, four firms were used for collecting investments from public. Apart from the 15 companies, police had also identified nine more firms operated by other directors of her companies.
“Money collected by these four active companies were transferred to the remaining 11 and later to the nine companies operated by Nowhera’s associates. These nine companies were shell companies. Several crores were withdrawn by the accused,’’ a source in Hyderabad police told TOI.
Though police suspect that Nowhera had collected nearly Rs 5,600 crore from 1.72 lakh investors across the country, they could only seize Rs 25 crore from the accounts of her companies.
Nowhera has also been accused of collecting investments from abroad in foreign currency. Also, she has been accused of splurging investors’ money during the Karnataka assembly elections, where her party, All India Mahila Empowerment Party, contested.
In fact, though her business model was to trade gold by using investors’ money with a promise to pay a return of 36%, police had neither found gold nor receipts related to it.
“Some of the documents submitted to the offices of GST and RoC were also found to be fake. During investigation, Nowhera had not shared any information. Our findings are based on material evidence seized during raids,’’ the sources added.
Investigators suspect Nowhera had diverted Rs 1,000 crore investors’ money to Dubai and other foreign countries. “Nowhera had bought properties using these funds,’’ an official said.