Nirav Modi's CFO Vipul Ambani, 4 others arrested
BY Team MP20 Feb 2018 11:57 PM IST
Team MP20 Feb 2018 11:57 PM IST
NEW DELHI/MUMBAI: Vipul Ambani, the top executive handling finances of celebrity designer Nirav Modi's firm is among the five officials arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday evening. The arrests were made in two parallel bank fraud cases being investigated by the probe agency.
The CBI, which had already arrested five Punjab National Bank officials, has turned its attention to the role of senior executives of the private firms for the massive bank frauds linked to companies run by billionaire designer Nirav Modi and his uncle, Mehul Choksi.
A CBI official said the three functionaries of Nirav Modi's firms include Vipul Ambani, president, finance, at Firestar International, Kavita Mankikar, executive assistant and authorised signatory of the three firms and Arjun Patil, senior executive Firestar Group.
In the second case registered against jewellery firms run by Mehul Choksi, the CBI has arrested Kapil Khandelwal, the chief financial officer of the Nakshatra and Gitanjali group and Niten Shahi, a manager at the Gitanjali group.
As part of the multi-agency probe, the I-T department on Tuesday raided 20 premises linked to Gitanjali Gems promoter Choksi and associated firms in connection with a tax evasion case, official sources said.
They said the searches were conducted in Mumbai, Pune, Surat, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and few other cities against 13 companies linked to Choksi.
In his first remarks on the Punjab National Bank scam that erupted last week, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday blamed the PNB management and auditors for the Rs. 11,300 crore fraud that the celebrity diamond designer Nirav Modi had been able to pull off. Jaitley, who called for an additional mechanism to nip stray cases in the bud, underlined frauds such as the one staring the government-run in its face, not only had a direct cost on the country and the taxpayer but an indirect cost on borrowings and development as well.
Jaitley said when bank managements get the authority to make decisions, they are expected to utilise it efficiently and in the right manner. The question for the bank management was if they were found lacking.
In a related development, the Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear on Friday a plea seeking a SIT probe and other reliefs in the over Rs 11,000 crore PNB fraud.
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