![[hand]](/hs-pics/portraits/hands/mcbride7.jpg)
![[face]](/hs-pics/portraits/faces/morse.jpg)
Dipak Rao goes to jail
SurreyLive reports that Dipak Rao, who stole £2.2 million (approximately $2.9 million) from Deep Purple, has been sentenced to jail. He served as an accountant for HEC Enterprises and Deep Purple (Overseas) since 1992 and was made director of the two companies in 2003 and 2009 respectively, the latter just months before Tony Edwards’ death. Both companies were owned by Tony Edwards and John Coletta estates, and were supposed to collect and and distribute royalties for the band’s pre-reunion output.
Between 2008 and 2014 Rao
…Transferred large sums of money from the accounts of Deep Purple Overseas Ltd and HEC Enterprises Ltd into his own.
He then invested the cash into a number of money making schemes, all of which later transpired to be scams and resulted in Rao losing the money.
The scheme was discovered in 2014 at a board meeting, which led to resignation of Rao and bankruptcy of both companies.
On April 30, 2019, he was sentenced by the local court to six years and four months imprisonment.
Rao will serve at least half of his sentence in jail before being released on licence. He has also been disqualified as a director of a company until 2028.
He pleaded guilty to two offences, fraud by abuse of position and transferring criminal property, on March 29.
The disgraced director has lost his house, assets and pension, equating to £779,000 in total. His wife now lives in Canada with their son, working as a child minder for their grandchildren.
Thanks to SurreyLive, with heads up from BraveWords.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Thieving prick. Hope he gets buggered.
May 2nd, 2019 at 14:33Maybe he can give Julian a kick up the Assange while he’s there! 💩