The District Court, Kathmandu on Tuesday sent six accused including Prithvi Bahadur Shah who are facing charges of fraud, document forgery, cooperatives fraud, and organised crime into judicial custody.

District Attorney Kathmandu earlier had filed criminal cases against Shah and his six associates based on the investigation of the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Police on charges of defrauding a number of foreigners. Police said thirteen other accused are at large.

“The court on Tuesday ordered to send six accused including Shah and his brother Bijaya Bikram Shah into judicial custody,” said CIB Spokesperson Superintendent of Police Sanjaya Singh Thapa. “Of the seven accused, the court ordered Binita Tamang of Bhaktapur be freed on a bail of Rs50,000.”

According to him, Shah duo have been jailed at Dillibazar prison while Anup Khadka, Chakra Bahadur Khatri, Rukmangat Kafle and Ranga Bahadur Saud have been kept at the Central Prison, Sundhara, as per the court’s order.

Prithvi Bahadur Shah, the central character in a row between former finance minister Janardan Sharma and Nepal Rastra Bank Governor Maha Prasad Adhikari early last year, along with his associates are accused of defrauding foreigners in a number of ways and receiving their money.

According to the CIB, the accused received $4.54 million, 22,000 pound sterling, and 340,000 Canadian dollars which converted into a total of Rs639.5 million, through online hacking and got the money transferred to the accounts of their businesses and individuals.

Of the total amount transferred to Nepal, $1.50 million (Rs206.88 million) has been held by various banks including Kumari, NCC, and Global IME without depositing them in the accounts of Shah and his associates, and an additional Rs12.89 million in their accounts has been frozen.

Shah, however, was able to use Rs388.66 million of the total transferred amount to invest in real estate, shares, gold, company registration, and insurance. “While purchasing land, he evaded taxes by undervaluing the prices of plots,” the CIB said.

Police received 24 complaints from 56 victims—all US citizens—through the US Federal Investigation Bureau (FBI). “They have claims for $2.89 million,” AIG Uttam Raj Subedi, chief of the CIB, said at a press meet in early March. “As more amounts have been transferred from the US, this group might have more victims there.”

Besides committing fraud, they were also found to have used fake thumb prints to register a company and submitted fake documents to receive money from abroad. In order to hide the money that was brought illegally, Shah transferred the ownership of a company to others but continued to handle the company’s bank account, according to the CIB.