ED moves plea to seize Nirav Modi's assets abroad

RebMUMBAI: A special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court on Monday allowed the Enforcement Directorate's plea seeking issuance of Letter Rogatory (LR) to competent authorities in six countries to aid the identification and seizure of Nirav Modi's properties abroad.
Special judge M S Azmi allowed the pleas submitted for issuance of LRs to Hong Kong (Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China), USA, UAE, UK, Singapore and South Africa. The ED had moved the pleas under the PMLA Act for recovery and seizure of proceeds of crime, collection of documents and evidence lying in these countries so as to enable them to complete the investigations.

The CBI has registered two separate FIRs in the Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud case, as most of the accused are common in both the instances. The first FIR for defrauding Rs 281 crore is against Nirav Modi, his wife Ami, brother Nishal and uncle Mehul Choksi along with others. The second FIR is related with Rs 4,900 crore fraud focusing on Mehul Choksi, Gitanjali Gems and others. A case was subsequently registered by the ED to probe the money laundering aspect.

In pleas moved through the ED counsel Hiten Venegaonkar, the investigating agency told the court on Monday that Modi had spread his business operations in many countries including Hong Kong, USA, UAE, UK, Singapore and South Africa etc. It said that investigations had revealed that Modi had established various firms, including Diamond R US, Solar Exports, Stellar Diamonds, Firestar Diamond International etc and became an integrated diamond manufacturer who bought rough diamonds, sold polished ones and other stones and also designed jewellery .

"Apparently, he had got issued multiple high values letters of undertaking (LoUs) in favour of his firms from PNB which resulted in disbursement of funds as per the Society for World Interbank Financial Telecommunications messages sent by PNB. It was later found by the bank that the same were issued fraudulently since there was no record of the LoUs in the bank's official records," the ED said. Replying to the court's query, Venegaonkar said that the evidence was based on the statement of the company secretary.