Indian American must repay $64M used in embezzlement scheme

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Indian American Iftikar ‘Ifty’ Ahmed has been ordered to pay $64 million to Oak Investment Partners as he has been accused of embezzling funds from his own company.

U.S. District Judge Janet B. Arterton has ordered Ahmed to repay $42 million to Oak Investment Partners, $21 million in penalties and $1.5 million in interest.

The Securities and Exchange Commission had initially asked for $89 million but Arterton declined to award the full amount, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Ahmed fled the country in 2015 and went to India on an invalid Indian passport since his American one was seized by the government though he recently filed an appeal on October 1.

In an e-mail interview with The Wall Street Journal, he said that he is currently poor in India, hoping from one friend’s house to the other and allegedly has cancer.

He is asking the SEC, who has frozen his and his wife, Shalini’s assets of approximately $118 million, to unfreeze some of them so he can pursue treatment.

A hearing on this has been scheduled for October 29.

A Connecticut court has also frozen $74 million of his assets, including an eight-bedroom mansion in Greenwich, two apartments in Manhattan, and gold and jewelry worth millions.

According to The Wall Street Journal report, Ahmed initially came under suspicion in 2015 for alleged insider trading, which prompted Oak Investments to start their own investigation, revealing the embezzlement scheme.

The SEC reported that Ahmed allegedly presented Oak’s partners with investment opportunities in overseas businesses, misrepresented the terms of the deals and transferred the difference in amounts to accounts controlled by him and his wife, the report added.

He made at least 10 fraudulent deals and even used the $18 million from the Oak investment money to purchase a condominium in Manhattan.

Ahmed graduated from IIT Delhi and received his MBA from Harvard University.

He worked at Goldman Sachs, where his wife also works.

She was initially charged with money laundering in an unrelated matter however, those charges were dropped.