'Clinching proof' against software CEO Kedia

Feb 17, 2007, 9:15 GMT

Kolkata, Feb 17 (IANS) The Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) claims it has clinching evidence against the director of an IT firm in West Bengal who was arrested for alleged involvement with a US drug cartel.

Sanjay Kedia, the director of Kolkata-based IT company Xponse Technologies Limited, was arrested Sunday in the city's info-tech hub, Salt Lake's Sector V, for alleged involvement with a US firm linked to a drug cartel.

'We have clinching evidence against Kedia. At this stage of investigations, we cannot divulge it, but we are working on a solid case against him,' an NCB official told IANS on condition of anonymity.

'We have zeroed in on him after a yearlong surveillance. It is a joint exercise by us (NCB) and our US counterpart - the Drug Enforcement Authority (DEA),' he said.

'You can say that both the DEA and NCB worked jointly. And though this might have affected many of the innocent employees of Xponse and come as a blow to the IT sector, it is an alarm bell for the outsourcing and software industry,' said the official.

'The laptops, CDs, server and other gizmos seized from the premises of Xponse are being examined by forensic experts,' he said. 'We are presenting all before the court and hope that Kedia would continue to remain in judicial custody.'

US-based Steven Mahana, who owns a 49 percent share in Xponse, was also reportedly arrested in America. 'We are not sure about Mahana, but our officials might visit the US for investigations,' the official added.

Kedia and Mahana, the NCB alleged, are involved in trafficking psychotropic substances, mainly phentermine, and are allegedly linked to drug cartels.

According to NCB, Kedia built a database of doctors in the US, their registration numbers and the drugs they prescribe and then floated several online pharmacies from where the addicts, who are unable to buy them legally without prescription, phoned a toll-free number on the websites.

NCB said the addicts paid with their cards without worrying about prescriptions that Kedia would pull out from his database and send to a pharmacy in the client's neighbourhood for delivery of the drugs.

NCB also charged Kedia with laundering huge sums of drug money in various international bank accounts in Hong Kong, Luxembourg, the US and Sweden.

Workstations at Xponse fell silent and the shocked employees left the premises - the seventh and eighth floors of Kariwala Towers - as the NCB sealed the office Tuesday in the first such crackdown in Sector V.

'I don't know what to do now. I am applying to other companies but now I have lost the bargaining position. Our careers are at stake,' said a woman employee of the 350-member Xponse staff.

'We had no inkling of what was going on. I did not work in the call centre and it is said the operations were going on from the call centre,' she said.

'We have never seen the US owner of the firm,' she said, but recalls Kedia as a warm and friendly person. 'He was a jovial person who would have his lunch with employees. He was never a conceited person.'

A section of the Xponse employees have tried to submit petitions to State IT Minister Debesh Das and even Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, but have been rebuffed.

Founded in 2002 by Kedia, Xponse's 'apparent' objective is to provide holistic technological solutions to businesses that intend to compete in the omni-changing global marketplace.

Kedia, who has a degree from IIT-Delhi, pursued a master's degree in North Carolina University in the US. He gathered the requisite managerial and technical skills to launch a company by working in the US with IT juggernauts such as Microsoft, eGain, Charles Schwab, AT and T and JP Morgan, the company website says.

The company has expanded by more than 400 percent in less than three years of its operations.

© 2007 Indo-Asian News Service