Fresh 9cr fraud comes to haunt PNB

The CBI on Thursday registered a fresh case against the PNB employees who were arrested in the multi- crore fraud case after the bank’s Brady House branch officials detected another fraud committed by the same set of accused.

As per the new case, the two bank employees defrauded their branch office to the tune of ` 9.09 crore, by issuing two fraudulent LoUs to Chandri Papers and Allied Products.

The accused named in the case are Gokulnath Shetty, retired deputy manager; Manoj Kharat, single window operator; Aditya Rasiwasia and Ishwardas Agarwal, director Chandri Paper and Allied Products, with other unknown persons.

On March 9, PNB’s deputy general manager Avneesh Nepalia submitted a written complaint to the Mumbai CBI, alleging that the Mr Shetty and Nr Kharat hatched conspiracy with Mr Rasiwasia, Mr Agarwal and others to cheat the Brady House branch to the tune of ` 9.09 crore ($ 14.21 lakh).

The complaint stated that the two employees,

who also assisted fugitive Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi, had issued two LOUs for the above amount to the company.

The LOUs were issued to SBI’s Antwerp branch in Belgium on April 25 last year with payment due date till January 20, 2020.

“There was no credit limit available for the accused company nor was there any 110 per cent margin

retained by the bank as per the bank records,” stated a CBI officer.

The taint at PNB was first revealed after it came to the fore that Mr Shetty and Mr Kharat acted at the behest of Mr Modi and Mr Choksi and issued 143 fraudulent LOUs to the tune of over ` 11,400 crore to Allahabad and Axis Bank branches in Hong Kong.

THE NEWLY uncovered scam raises fresh doubts about whether more such cases involving fraudulent guarantees lurk on the books of PNB or other state- owned banks.