Congress asks for proof
The Congress on Friday threw an open challenge to the government to establish the Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam happened during the previous UPA regime instead of a vague claim that it was going on since 2011 and asked Prime Minister Modi to break his silence on his personal friends involved in th biggest bank scam.
Its chief spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala asked the government to make public all 293 Letters of Undertaking (LoUs) admitted by the bank in its exposure of Rs 11,400-crore fraud by absconding “Chhota Modi” as the LoUs are for a limited period and cannot survive almost 4 years after the UPA period.
He told a Press conference here that what was the Modi government doing all even if it were an UPA-time fraud and who allowed all four scamsters flee from India weeks before the FIR was lodged -- Nirav Modi, his wife, brother and maternal uncle Mehul Choksi, whom Prime Minister Modi could spot even in the crowd to call him “hamaare Mehul bhai,” but now his law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad denies any contact of the PM with this family. He also nailed the lie of the Enforcement Directorate’s claim of recovery of jewellery worth Rs 5100 crore in raids on Nirav Modi’s premises on Thursday, asserting that such a quick valuation is impossible without a valuer’s report.
Surjewala said the bank loot scam has got bigger in just last 24 hours from Rs 11,400 crore to Rs 21, 306 crore by taking into account the exposure of 30 banks in loans of Rs 9,906 crore extended to the four companies of Nirav and his maternal uncle Mehul Choksi. The total exposure will cross Rs 28,306 crore if depreciation of the PNB’s stock by Rs 7,000 crore in the last two days is considered and it may even cross Rs 30,000 crore once exposure of banks to three companies named in the PNB FIR -- Diamonds RUS, Solar Exports and Stellar Diamonds is disclosed. Experts estimate it to be in the range of Rs 3,000 to Rs 5,000 crore, he said.
He said Gujarat leader Shaktisinh Gohil sitting next to him felt no wonder “UDAAN” (which actually means connecting small towns with flights) is “the buzzword of Modi government, wherein every scamster can ‘fleece and fly,’ unchecked and undetected.”
The Congress leader said he had revealed a letter of Bengaluru-based whistleblower businessman S V Hari Prasad to show the Prime Minister was in the know of the bank fraud since July 2016, but he was releasing now three more documents to show that the Modi government, its agencies as also the governments of Gujarat and Maharashtra had the prior knowledge of the fraud as early as May 7, 2015.