Key accused faces assets charge

NEWDELHI: The CBI has slapped a separate case of amassing disproportionate assets from known sources of income against key Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud accused Gokulnath Shetty.

It has accused Shetty and his wife Ashalata, a clerk with the Indian Bank, of amassing assets over 200% more than their known sources of income. HT has seen the FIR. Shetty was arrested by CBI in the PNB fraud case in February this year and later formally charged by the agency.

Shetty has been accused of colluding with diamond traders Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi, to defraud the bank by issuing letters

SHETTY HAS BEEN ACCUSED OF COLLUDING WITH DIAMOND TRADERS NIRAV MODI AND MEHUL CHOKSI

of undertaking (LoUs) and foreign letters of credit (FLCs) worth around ~14,000 crore in violation of banking norms.

During the initial probe, CBI found that between April 1, 2011 and May 31, 2017, Shetty amassed disproportionate assets to the tune of ~2.63 crore. On his wife Ashalata, the CBI FIR alleged: “(She has ) been found to have actively assisted her husband in the concealment and acquisition of assets raised from ill-gotten wealth...” Shetty was posted in PNB’s Brady House branch which issued LoUs and FLCs to Modi and Choksi.

An LoU is a guarantee which is given by an issuing bank to Indian banks having branches abroad to grant a short-term credit to the applicant for making payments for imports. Shetty has been accused of sending messages for issuance of LoUs and FLCs using an international messaging system for banking systems called SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication), which is used to pass instructions among banks globally to transfer funds, even while not entering the same in the core banking system of PNB.