The Enforcement Directorate (ED), which has been probing the accounts and trading patterns of top brokers of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE), has now brought the Unit Trust of India also within the ambit of its probe.
ED officials were tight-lipped on the contents of the summons issued to UTI but sources said that certain investment decisions of the Trust were being looked into although at the current juncture there was no evidence of any wrongdoing.
They also maintained that the probe had nothing to do with the current UTI imbroglio but a continuation of the existing probe on brokers. However, UTI is the only Indian financial institution to have been issued a summons in this matter. UTI officials, when contacted, refused to comment on the issue.
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The directorate had collected trading details for the last quarter of fiscal 2001 (January-March) of the top 50 brokers to ascertain their trading patterns with a special focus on their funds source.
Based on their findings, the ED has issued summons to around eight brokers seeking additional details and more specific information on certain investments made through them. It is in this connection that UTI has been brought into the ambit of investigations, sources within the directorate said.
Following allegations that certain entities had used illegal channels for routing money into the stockmarkets, the directorate scrutinised the accounts of these brokers to see if there was any possible trail to link these funds with corporates or their overseas entities.
The directorate is compiling and collating data in tandem with other investigative agencies probing the recent stock market crisis. The agency has been trying to find out whether there has been any violation of foreign exchange regulations, including money laundering.