CBI questions top PNB officials; ED attaches 21 properties of Nirav Modi

NEW DELHI: The CBI on Saturday questioned Punjab National Bank (PNB) Managing Director-cum-Chief Executive Officer Sunil Mehta and Executive Director K V Brahmaji Rao in connection with the `11,300 crore loan fraud case involving the state-run bank and diamantaires Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi. Mehta and Rao were summoned to the agency’s Mumbai office, where sleuths grilled them for more than eight hours, official sources said here. 

While an executive director of the bank was questioned by the CBI earlier this week, the MD was quizzed for the first time since the first case was registered on January 31 and the second FIR was lodged on February 15 against Modi and his family members and Choksi and his family members, respectively. 
While Modi’s firms Diamond R Us, Solar Exports and Stellar Diamond have been named as accused in the first FIR, the second case names the Gitanjali Group led by Choksi, and his firms Gili, Gitanjali and Nakshatra.

Both Modi and Choksi defrauded the PNB through irregular Letters of Undertaking and Letters of Credit, mostly issued last year.The agency on Saturday continued grilling the 12 arrested accused persons. The CBI had on Friday quizzed two general managers and deputy general managers who had served as assistant GMs at PNB’s Brady House branch, the centre of the fraud. 

Meanwhile, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday attached 21 immovable properties worth `523.72 crore of Modi and companies controlled by him under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. The attached assets include a farmhouse at Alibaug, Mumbai, a solar power plant, 135 acres of land in Ahmednagar, and residential and office properties in Mumbai and Pune.Agency sources said that the top brass of the PNB was under scanner for the failure of the bank in detecting the fraud, which was being perpetrated since 2011.Subsequent to the cases against Modi and Choksi relating to the PNB, the CBI on Thursday registered another case of fraud by a Delhi-based jeweller to the tune of `389.5 crore involving the Oriental Bank of Commerce (OBC). 

The case concerning OBC was registered against Dwarka Das Seth International and Dwarka Das Seth SEZ India Incorporation and proprietor Sabhya Seth and directors Reeta Seth, Krishna Kumar Singh and Ravi Kumar Singh and unknown public servants and others. The named accused are alleged to have defrauded the bank between 2007 and February 2013 through irregular instruments, including foreign bill discounting, bank guarantee, packing credit and foreign documentary bill purchase. The accused have been booked under Indian Penal Code sections relating to criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery and using forged documents as genuine, besides criminal misconduct by public servant, under the Prevention of Corruption Act.