The Central Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday filed a first chargesheet pertaining to the second case registered against Mehul Choksi and others involving ₹7,080.86 crore Punjab National Bank scam.
The case was registered on February 15 and covers 142 letters of undertaking (LoU) and 58 foreign letters of credit (FLC) involving multiple bills. The agency has chargesheeted three firms owned by Mr. Choksi, four employees of one of his firms in addition to several employees of PNB who were named in the first chargesheet.
The firms, Gitanjali Gems Ltd, Gili India Ltd, Nakshtra Brand Ltd, have been named along with 15 individuals of these companies in the chargesheet.
Judicial custody
Aniyath Nair, director of Gili; Nitin Sahi, assistant finance officer of Gitanjali; Kapil Khandelwal, chief financial officer of Geetanjali; and Vipul Chetalia, head, banking operations of the Gitanjali group; have also been named as accused. They were all arrested along with Gokulnath Shetty in this case and are currently in judicial custody.
The then deputy manager Mr. Shetty, single window operator Manoj Kharat, chief manager Bechhu Tiwari, Brady House branch manager Yashwant Joshi, scale I officer Praful Sawant, and internal auditor Mohinder Kumar Sharma are also arraigned.
The agency mentions that Mr. Shetty allegedly received over ₹1.02 crore as quid pro quo from Gitanjali Gems group in return for the favour of issuing fraudulent LoUs and FLCs.
The chargesheet points out, “During 2015 to 2018, Mr. Shetty debited an aggregate amount of ₹2.28 crore to the account of Gitanjali Exports Corporation Ltd towards arranger fees which is maintained with PNB, Brady House, in which Mr. Choksi is the managing director and authorised signatory. Mr. Shetty obtained quotes by Debajyoti Dutta, proprietor of Rishika Financials for Mr. Choksi’s companies for the issuance of LoU by PNB out of which Mr. Shetty compelled Mr. Dutta to part with an aggregate sum of ₹1,02,53,664 as illegal gratification by way of cheques for himself and his family by threatening Mr. Dutta of stopping his business.”
The investigation has revealed that, during 2015 to 2017, the accused PNB officials fraudulently issued LoUs for obtaining buyer’scredit and FLCs to overseas banks in favour of the said three companies without any sanctioned limit or cash margin and without making entries in the CBS system of the bank.
The agency also states that the fraud was allegedly perpetrated despite the knowledge of senior officials of PNB who did not implement the circulars and caution notices issued by the Reserve Bank of India regarding safeguarding the SWIFT operations and instead, misrepresented the factual situation to RBI.
The agency has so far searched 52 premises, made five arrests and examined about 79 witnesses in connection with the case.
