The economic offence wing (EOW) of Mumbai Police is likely to defreeze an escrow account of National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL) by Thursday morning. NSEL's escrow account was among those 58 bank accounts which was frozen by EOW on Tuesday, to investigate Rs.5,500 crore NSEL payout crisis.
Crisis-ridden NSEL had opened an escrow account after direction by the government to ensure payouts on priority to about 8,000 small investors stuck after the exchange halted trading. But on Tuesday, NSEL failed its payout seventh time in a row - giving a reason that EOW had frozen its settlement and escrow accounts, both.
In an email statement, NSEL had said, "Due to freezing of bank accounts, NSEL is unable to make any payouts on Tuesday. NSEL has informed the FMC of this development. NSEL is taking legal advices to defreeze the settlement bank accounts. Investors and members will be notified in due course."
Talking exclusively to Headlines Today, senior EOW official admitted, "It was our mistake to freeze escrow account on Tuesday. At that point of time, when all 58 bank accounts were getting freezed, we were unaware which are escrow account and which are settlement accounts." But he assured,"
For the benefit of investors, we would defreeze the escrow account at the earliest. Wednesday is public holiday, therefore, on Thursday we would communicate to the bank and will ensure NSEL's escrow account gets defreezed soon."
Interestingly, as of now, NSEL's escrow account has only Rs.18 crore. That means - payout failure was quite imminent. NSEL was supposed to make a scheduled payment of Rs.174.72 crore to investors on Tuesday.
According to settlement plan, NSEL would pay Rs.3,494.4 crore this year in installments of Rs.174.72 crore every Tuesday. The exchange has defaulted on payouts for the past six weeks and has settled about Rs.150 crore so far.
EOW has frozen total 58 bank accounts of promoters of FTIL and NSEL - which also includes personal accounts of Jignesh Shah, Anjani Sinha, Joseph Massey, Shantilal Guru, B D Pawar, Amit Mukherjee, M C Pandey, Shrikant Jawalgekar, Neerav Pandey, NSEL's auditor Mukesh Shah and others.