HSBC's cheating charges against Mumbai firm baseless: Police

Mumbai police have filed a closure report in a local court in an alleged Rs 268-crore cheating case filed by one of the private equity arms of foreign lender HSBC Group against a city-based post-production company, police said today.
The case was closed in July after the probe by the Mumbai police's Economic Offence Wing (EOW) found no evidence to substantiate the allegations of forgery and fund diversion levelled by HSBC Principal Investments Holdings Mauritius against Avitel Post Studioz.
On April 23, HSBC PI Holdings had filed a case with the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) alleging that Avitel had raised 60 million dollars (Rs 268 crore then) in 2011 from it by claiming the latter was close to execution of a contract with BBC.

HSBC India was not available for comments.
HSBC claimed it had later realised that Avitel had never been in talks with the BBC. HSBC further claimed that it had primarily invested in Avitel in the background of a contract from BBC.
Based on the complaint of HSBC, the EoW had registered an FIR against Avitel company and its management under IPC sections 419 (cheating by personation) 420 (Cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 467 (Forgery of valuable security), 468 (Forgery for purpose of cheating) and 120B (criminal conspiracy).
In the complaint, HSBC had claimed that Avitel, which has a sister company in Dubai, produced forged documents to show that it had entered into a contract to upgrade the library of BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) from 2D to 3D format.