Gameskraft ex-CFO Ramesh Prabhu diverted company firms to personal F&O trading, lost Rs 250 crore: Report

Bengaluru-based real-money gaming company, Gameskraft Technologies’ Group former CFO, Ramesh Prabhu, in a ‘voluntary’ confession email reportedly owned up to diverting company funds in futures and options trading, and then losing over Rs 250 crore. In the email sent on March 5, Prabhu conceded that his actions were a ‘serious breach of trust’, a report revealed. He added that no other employees were complicit or aware of the scheme.

According to a report in Moneycontrol, the revelations came in a First Information Report (FIR) registered on September 9 after a complaint was filed by the company. In the FIR, Gameskraft alleged that Prabhu ‘dishonestly’ siphoned off funds amounting to Rs 270.43 crore over nearly five years. He used this money for his personal trading activities without the company’s approval, consent or authority.

The company, as per the report, carried out a ‘fact-finding’ review that showed unauthorised financial transactions of Rs 231.39 crore between FY20 and FY25. Out of this, Rs 211.53 crore was wrongly shown as ‘investments’ in the company’s books. This had a carrying value of Rs 250.57 crore on March 31, 2024. An additional Rs 19.86 crore was recorded as investments in FY25, due to which Gameskraft had to write off Rs 270.43 crore in its financial statements in FY25.

Prabhu used an RBL Bank account for the transactions to his personal bank account, while marking them as investments in the company’s books. He also changed the company’s bank statements and created fake mutual fund statements, as per the report.

Since the email on March 5, Prabhu has remained untraceable. The complaint added that the company failed to contact him or identify his whereabouts.

Gameskraft is one of the companies to be impacted by the government’s ban on real money gaming under the recently passed Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act.