This went on as long as the stock prices kept going up, and no one had a clue about Mehta's operations. Once the fraud was exposed, though, a lot of banks were left holding BRs which did not have any value – the banking system had been swindled of a whopping . He knew that he would be accused if people came to know about his involvement in issuing cheques to Mehta. Subsequently, it transpired that Citibank, brokers like Pallav Sheth and Ajay Kayan, industrialists like Aditya Birla, Hemendra Kothari, a number of politicians, and the RBI Governor S.Venkitaramanan all had played a role in allowing or facilitating Mehta's rigging of the share market.