PNB scam: ED files chargesheet against Nirav Modi and 23 other associates
The Enforcement Directorate has submitted it's first charge sheet on Thursday in the Punjab National Bank fraud case worth Rs 13600 crore. Total twenty-four persons have been named in the charge sheet including billionaire jeweller Nirav Modi.
The 12,000 page-charge sheet (prosecution complaint) includes the names of Nirav's sister Purvi Mehta, Purvi's husband Maiank Mehta, Nirav's brothers Neeshal Modi and Nehal Modi and their father Deepak Modi and eighteen other persons have been named as an accused in the charge sheet for commission of offence of money laundering (Section 3 and Section 4) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002. The other accused include the three firms of Nirav Modi i.e. M/s Solar Exports, Stellar Diamonds and Diamonds R Us which had obtained fraudulently obtained Rs. 6498 crores through Letters of Undertaking issued by Punjab National Bank, Brady House branch, Mumbai and his Fire star group of companies. The funds so obtained by said three entities were partly utilised for payment to various overseas companies and also for offsetting earlier Letters of Undertaking. It was revealed during investigation that the payments were made to 17 overseas entities in Hong Kong, Dubai and USA since 2011 in the guise of export /import.
During further investigation, it was revealed that all these overseas companies are dummy companies of Nirav. The directors and shareholders on these companies were dummy directors and were employees of Firestar group of companies who were working as per the directions of Nirav and his other trusted officials Shyamsunder Wadhwa, Aditya Nanavati, Mihir Bhansali and Saju Poulose.
The statements of various dummy directors and associated persons revealed that they were just mechanically transferring the goods and monies as per the directions of Nirav without any economic rationale and logic.
The 12,000 page-charge sheet includes the names of Nirav's kin and 18 others as accused in the chargesheet for commission of offence of money laundering (Section 3 and Section 4) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002