The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has arrested Subhash Shankar Parab, a key accused within the Rs 7,000 crore diamantaire Nirav Modi financial institution fraud case, who was deported from Cairo on Tuesday after a protracted diplomatic and authorized course of.
A CBI workforce had gone to Egypt’s capital to deliver again 50-year-old Parab, who was allegedly saved in unlawful confinement in a Cairo suburb by Modi, the fugitive diamantaire, officers stated.
The CBI had been chasing Parab, Deputy General Manager (Finance) in Modi’s Firestar Diamond and understood to be a key witness to the Letters of Undertaking (LoU) submitted to the Punjab National Bank (PNB) to siphon off over Rs 7,000 crore, they stated.
Soon after the rip-off broke in 2018, Parab was one of many executives who went lacking together with Modi’s relations and his uncle Mehul Choksi. The latter discovered refuge in Antigua and Barbuda, a Carribbean island nation, they stated.
India had issued an Interpol Red Notice in opposition to Parab to trace him and convey him again, they stated. India obtained info that Parab, a vital hyperlink associated to LoUs, was saved in unlawful confinement by Modi’s males.
He was taken from Dubai to Egypt, and India had expressed issues for his security, they stated. After a protracted diplomatic and authorized course of, the CBI managed to safe “administrative extradition” or deportation of Parab, who might spill the beans on the nation’s greatest banking rip-off allegedly perpetrated by Modi and Choksi with a mixed lack of Rs 13,000 crore, they stated.
The duo is needed for allegedly siphoning off Rs 13,500 crore of public cash from the state-run PNB, utilizing the Letters of Undertaking. While Modi is in a London jail after repeated denial of bail and is contesting extradition to India, Choksi had taken the citizenship of Antigua and Barbuda in 2017 utilizing the Citizenship by Investment programme even earlier than fleeing India within the first week of January 2018. The rip-off got here to gentle subsequently.
The CBI has charged a PNB official Gokulnath Shetty, together with others, with allegedly serving to Modi and Choksi to perpetrate the rip-off by issuing LOUs to their corporations, primarily based on which they took loans from banks overseas.
The investigations revealed that messages for fraudulent LoUs had been despatched to abroad banks by misusing Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), a world messaging system for banking, and with out making their subsequent entries in PNB’s inner software program ‘Finacle’, thus bypassing any scrutiny of such funds within the financial institution, they stated.
An LoU is a assure given by an issuing financial institution to Indian banks having branches overseas to grant a short-term credit score to the applicant. In case of default, the financial institution issuing the LoU has to pay the legal responsibility to the credit-giving financial institution together with accruing curiosity.
The corporations of Modi and Choksi took loans from banks overseas on the premise of those LoUs however didn’t repay them, thus transferring the legal responsibility on PNB.
It is alleged that senior officers of the PNB, together with the then CEO and MD, didn’t implement the circulars and warning notices issued by the Reserve Bank of India concerning safeguarding of the SWIFT operation and misrepresented the factual place to the apex financial institution. Reconciliation of the Core Banking Solutions (CBS) and SWIFT messages was not performed regardless of repeated RBI circulars, warning notices and questionnaires, the CBI has alleged.
(With PTI inputs)
Source: www.financialexpress.com”
