INTERNATIONAL SCAMSTER and absconder Dinesh Dalmia has finally been snared. A poster boy of the 2001 Ketan Parekh stock-market scam, the DSQ Software and DSQ Biotech promoter is a serial offender who created pump-and-dump schemes on three continents -- Asia, North America and Europe. Living it up in New Jersey till recently -- and driving a Ferrari -- he was caught by the CBI on Saturday.
INTERNATIONAL SCAMSTER and absconder Dinesh Dalmia has finally been snared. A poster boy of the 2001 Ketan Parekh stock-market scam, the DSQ Software and DSQ Biotech promoter is a serial offender who created pump-and-dump schemes on three continents -- Asia, North America and Europe. Living it up in New Jersey till recently -- and driving a Ferrari -- he was caught by the CBI on Saturday.
The alleged mastermind of the 2001 Calcutta Stock Exchange payment crisis, the DSQ Software MD had defrauded his own firm of over Rs 595 crore using the preferential allotment route. Investigating agencies had been searching for Dalmia for the past couple of years. First he fled from India and set up shop in the US as the owner of multiple BPO outfits with offices in New Jersey, London and India.
For a long time, it was business as usual. Soon, using his trademark tactic of diverting funds, he attempted to take over Aegis Communications and reverse-merge another company into a Nasdaq-listed entity, TACT. This was when the New York Post began to sniff around -- and hit pay dirt. Up to his usual dirty tricks, Dalmia had begun to divert $82 million raised for the BPO operations to Tortola, British Virgin Islands, and filed for bankruptcy. Then he gave instructions to dismiss all his employees across the world. When things became difficult for him in the US, he reported left for Australia.
After the Interpol issued an arrest-on-sight notice against him, he slipped back into India.
On Sunday, Dalmia was taken to Chennai to be produced before the additional chief metropolitan magistrate, Egmore, where a case is pending against him.