Charges of criminal conspiracy slapped on Ananthasubramanian slapped.
New Delhi : Gitanjali group owner Mehul Choksi and Allahabad Bank CEO Usha Ananthasubramanian along with 13 others were on Wednesday charged by the CBI for alleged cheating and corruption in the issuance of fraudulent letters of undertakings (LoUs) worth over Rs 7,000 crore from Punjab National Bank in the country’s biggest banking scam case.
In addition, three companies of Choksi — Gitanjali Gems, Gili India and Nakshatra Brands — have also been made accused in the charge sheet filed before a special CBI court in Mumbai, officials said.
The charge sheet pertains to a second FIR related to alleged crimes of Choksi and his companies in the series of three such cases registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the over $2 billion scam case in which jeweller’s nephew Nirav Modi is also an accused, they said.
The charge sheet included statements of 50 witnesses and mentioned 12 fraudulent transactions made by Choksi to the tune of Rs 512 crore and his three firms. Choksi has been termed as a wanted accused in the 12,000-page charge sheet.
The agency has alleged Rs 7080.86 crore were siphoned off by Choksi and his companies using 142 LoUs and 58 foreign letters of credit, the officials said. Choksi and Modi are both absconding
The agency had on May 14 filed a charge sheet in a related case against diamond merchant Modi pertaining to alleged swindling of Rs 6,498.20 crore using fraudulent LoUs issued from PNB Brady House branch in Mumbai.
The cumulative figure of the funds swindled by Choksi and Modi now stands at Rs 13579.06 crore from PNB by using fraudulent LoUs, according to the charge sheets, the officials said.
Choksi and his companies allegedly availed credit from overseas branches of Indian banks using the fraudulent guarantees of PNB given through LoUs and letters of credit issued Brady House branch in Mumbai which were not repaid bringing the liability on the state run bank, the officials said.
The charge sheet, filed in the Mumbai special court after a three-and-a-month-long probe, alleged that Gokulnath Shetty, a deputy manager in PNB, arrested by the CBI, received Rs 1 crore from Choksi firms to issue LoUs to his companies, they said.
This quid pro quo pertains specifically to alleged illicit payments made by the companies of Choksi, they said. The probe into the overall picture to establish the total amount alleged received from companies of Modi and Choksi is still underway.
The instructions for transferring the funds were allegedly issued by Shetty using an international messaging system for banking called SWIFT platform and without making their subsequent entries in the PNB’s internal banking software, thus bypassing scrutiny in the bank, they said.
A charge sheet is a final report filed by the CBI before a court in which it gives details of crime, evidence, and conclusions drawn by it from its probe. Ananthasubramanian, who was the MD and CEO of PNB during 2015-17, the bank’s sitting executive directors — K V Brahmaji Rao and Sanjiv Sharan, and general manager (international operations) Nehal Ahad have also been chargesheeted for criminal conspiracy, cheating and provisions of prevention of corruption act among others.