You killed my brand, Nirav writes to PNB
mumbai — Celebrity jeweller Nirav Modi, the alleged kingpin of the largest banking scam in the country’s history, has said PNB’s overzealousness shut the doors on his ability to clear the dues in a letter to the Punjab National Bank’s management.
Modi also said the dues were much less than what the bank has claimed, and that his relatives booked in the cases filed by the central agencies had nothing to do with the operations of the firms under their scanner.
In a letter Modi wrote on February 15/16 to the Punjab National Bank management, a copy of which PTI has seen, he pegged the money his companies owe to the bank at under Rs50 billion.
“The erroneously cited liability resulted in a media frenzy which led to immediate search and seizure of operations, and which in turn resulted in Firestar International and Firestar Diamond International effectively ceasing to be going-concerns,” he wrote in the letter.
“This thereby jeopardised our ability to discharge the dues of the group to the banks,” Modi wrote in the letter.
“In the anxiety to recover your dues immediately, despite my offer (on February 13, a day before the public announcement, and on 15) your actions have destroyed my brand and the business and have now restricted your ability to recover all the dues leaving a trail of unpaid debts,” he said.
The letter also refers to the extended discussions between him, and between his representatives and the bank officers, besides his emails of February 13 and 15, 2018.
Nirav Modi left the country along with his family in the first week of January, before the alleged scam became public.
The PNB, the second largest state-run bank, had, on February 14, informed the exchanges about detecting a $1.77 billion fraud at its Brady House branch in Mumbai, and named the firms led by Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi’s Gitanjali Group, and some other diamond and jewellery merchants as suspects.
Central government agencies the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate have registered cases on the complaint by the bank, and launched nationwide searches on dozens of offices and residences of the alleged fraudsters. The bank has named Nirav Modi’s brother, his American wife Ami, and uncle Mehul Choksi besides some others in the FIR.
He said that even after PNB’s complaint was filed, he wrote to them in good faith asking them to sell or allow him to “sell Firestar Group, or their valuable assets, and recover the dues not just from Firestar Group, but also from the three firms.”
Valuing his domestic business at around Rs65 billion, he said, “This could have helped reduce/ discharge the debt to the banking system,” but added that this is not possible as all his bank accounts have been frozen and assets sealed or seized.
He went on to state that PNB had time and again acknowledged that the buyers credit facility has been extended by it to the three partnership firms for several years, and that there has been no default on the part of any of these firms over all these years. He said that money went through PNB all these years for the repayments of the advances given by the overseas bank branches under the buyers credit.
On the valuables that CBI and ED searches yielded Rs56.49 billion, he said, “These, and other assets of the group and the three firms could have settled all the amounts due to banks. However, now that stage appears to have passed.” — PTI