Mumbai: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) charge sheet says that fugitive jeweler Mehul Choksi’s firms — Gitanjali Gems, Gili India Ltd, and Nakshatra Brands Ltd — were issued 142 unauthorised letters of understanding (LoU) and 58 foreign letters of credit (FLC) through Punjab National Bank (PNB) during the year 2017, causing ‘wrongful loss’ to the bank.
The Hindu , has a copy of the charge sheet that says, “PNB put a wrongful loss of $20,315,870.03 (equivalent to ₹130,02,15,682 at the rate of 64 per USD) in respect of 6 LoUs issued to the three companies and availing buyers’ credit against 142 LoUs issued by accused bank officials.”
The FLCs were issued to the three companies, and the value of FLCs against 311 bills under 58 FLCs were enhanced by Gokulnath Shetty, then deputy manager, and Manoj Kharat, single window operator, at PNB’s Brady House branch, and the companies wilfully did not make payment of ₹3106.56 crore on the due date to PNB, the charge sheet says.
PNB was put to a wrongful loss of $8,0043,570.43 and corresponding wrongful gain to accused persons on the account of fraudulently and dishonestly issuing 6 LoUs and fraudulently and dishonestly enhancing six FLCs investigated, the charge sheet said. 142 LoUs including the six investigated, and 311 FLC bills including the six investigated, issued by the three companies, were not recorded by the said companies.
Kapil Kandelwal, the joint president of Gitanjali Gems was privy to the conspiracy and intentionally camouflaged the identity of the LoU transactions, the CBI said.
Role of SBI
The charge sheet says, “$2,998,441 was credited by SBI Frankfurt to the NOSTRO account of PNB and they had sent SWIFT in confirmation about it on March 31, 201. On the same day PNB Brady House had issued 10 LoUs and the overseas lender was SBI Frankfurt. The maker and verifier of it was Mr. Kharat and authoriser was Mr. Shetty. The total amount of the said 10 transactions was $28,492,170, which was credited in the NOSTRO account of PNB. Further there were 24 debit entries in the NOSTRO account of PNB corresponding to the credits of 10 LoUs aggregating to $28,500,202.77 which was transferred to SBI Frankfurt.”
The quote for the transactions was obtained from SBI Frankfurt by Debajyoti Dutta, proprietor of Rishika Financials, acting at the behest of Mr. Shetty; mr. Dutta had arranged ₹97,404 which was raised to Gitanjali Gems’ PNB account.
Criminal misconduct
The charge sheet also says that senior PNB officials, Usha Ananthasubramanian, who was then CEO and MD of PNB, executive directors K.V. Brahmaji Rao and Sanjiv Sharan, and general manager Neha Ahad, had committed acts of criminal misconduct by not implementing the RBI circulars issued on August 3, 2016 despite having full knowledge that a similar fraud had occurred.
