NBWs issued against Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi
BY MPOST BUREAU8 April 2018 11:32 PM IST
MPOST BUREAU9 April 2018 5:05 AM IST
New Delhi: A special CBI court in Mumbai has issued non-bailable warrants (NBWs) against billionaire diamantaire Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi in connection with the cases related to over $2 billion banking fraud in the Punjab National Bank, officials said here on Sunday.
The special court has allowed the application of the agency for the issuance of NBWs against Modi and Choksi who had repeatedly refused to join the investigation in the scam, considered the biggest in the banking history of the country, the officials said.
The agency had written to Modi and Choksi to join probe on their official e-mail ids, but they have refused to join it citing business engagements and health issues.
The issuance of NBWs by a court also opens the door of seeking Red Corner Notices against both of the accused from the Interpol.
The government has claimed to have tracked Modi in Hong Kong where it has sent a request for his provisional arrest.
The CBI, in the meanwhile, is questioning officials of overseas branches of Indian banks which had extended credit facilities to the companies of Modi and Choksi by fraudulent Letters of Undertaking (LoUs) issued by the Punjab National Bank's Brady House branch in Mumbai.
The agency has also summoned the official who handled foreign exchange transactions in the Hong Kong branch of the Allahabad bank, they said, adding that he may join the probe soon.
It is alleged that the LoUs and LCs worth close to $2 billion were issued to the companies of the uncle-nephew duo of Choksi and Modi from the Brady Road branch of the bank through SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) messages.
Several bank employees have been booked for collusion in the case, they said.
These messages were allegedly not entered in the banking software of the PNB to bypass surveillance.
The uncle-nephew duo had managed to flee the country in the first week of January days before the PNB was able to detect the fraud.
The worst is over for PNB, and it will come out of the mess created by the Nirav Modi fraud case in six months, the state-run lender's Managing Director Sunil Mehta said on Sunday.
"So worst is behind us. Everything now seems to be under control as surgery is over, now we are in the recovery phase. We are anticipating that we will be able to come out of this entire problem and pain in the next six months," he said.
Awaiting a detailed vigilance report on the over Rs 13,000- crore Punjab National Bank scam, the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) on Sunday said it had asked statutory auditors of the bank to appear before it to furnish specific details about financial transactions. See also inside
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