Shares worth Rs 5800 crore sold, ED says 40 per cent loss in PNB, Mallya bank fraud cases recovered
Nearly 40 per cent of the money lost by banks in the alleged frauds perpetrated by fugitive businessmen Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and Vijay Mallya has been recovered so far, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) said on Wednesday.
According to the agency, the value of the total recovery from the latest sale stands at Rs 9,041.5 crore, or more than Rs 22,000 crore of fraud allegedly committed by these three.
Commenting on the development, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman tweeted, “Fugitive and economic offenders will be actively pursued, their properties attached and dues recovered.”
The trio, who fled abroad as the probe against them intensified, is being investigated by central investigative agencies such as the ED and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), when they were accused of defrauding banks, and classified these frauds. has gone. The country’s biggest criminal loan robbery ever.
The central agency narrowed down these two cases – fraud to the tune of Rs 13,000 crore and about Rs 9,000 crore allegedly by diamond merchant Nirav Modi, his uncle Mehul Choksi and others at PNB’s Brady House branch in Mumbai. The Kingfisher Airlines fraud started by Mallya in a statement issued here.
It said that three public sector banks misappropriated funds through their companies, resulting in a loss of more than Rs 22,000 crore (Rs 22,585.83 crore in fixed numbers) to a group of banks.
When asked for a comment, Choksi’s lawyer Vijay Aggarwal told PTI, “The ED has actually attached assets much more than the money of the banks.”
The ED, authorized to investigate such cases under criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), attached and seized assets totaling Rs 18,170.02 crore in these two cases, in which assets worth Rs 969 crore were “located”. is included. .
“The quantum of assets attached and confiscated is 80.45 per cent of the bank’s total loss of Rs 22,585.83 crore,” the ED said.
The agency said out of these attached properties, the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) on behalf of the SBI-led consortium, which had lent money to Mallya, sold fresh shares of United Breweries Ltd (UBL) worth Rs 5,824.50 crore.
The DRT action comes after the ED transferred shares worth around Rs 6,624 crore of UBL attached by it to the SBI-led consortium on the directions of a special PMLA court hearing these cases in Mumbai.
“The sale of these shares is expected to fetch an additional Rs 800 crore by June 25,” it said.
The ED said the banks had earlier recovered Rs 1,357 crore from similar sale of shares against Mallya and his now defunct Kingfisher Airlines.
He said that during the probe against Nirav Modi, other assets worth Rs 1,060 crore were earlier ‘relocated’ to the banks.
As on date, assets worth Rs 9,041.5 crore, “representing 40 per cent of the total loss to the banks, have been handed over to the public sector banks,” the ED said.
“Thus, the banks will have to recover a total of Rs 9,041.5 crore by way of sale of a part of the assets attached/seized by the ED under PMLA,” it said.
Besides, official sources said, Rs 329.67 crore has been recovered in the exchequer after Modi’s assets were seized in July last year after a special court in Mumbai declared a 50-year-old diamond trader a fugitive economic offender.
The ED said the probe has “inconclusively proven” that the trio used fake entities controlled by them for rotation and siphoned off money provided by banks.
“Investigators had to pierce through the multi-layered corporate veil to find these properties that were in investigative possession.”
“It was a huge trap of domestic and international transactions and concealment of assets abroad,” a senior official said.
The ED also returned homegrown assets like gold and diamond jewelery (of Modi and Choksi firms) from abroad to ensure that they are not disposed of and are available to banks and the exchequer for confiscation.
“A major part of these properties were held in the names of dummy entities, trusts, third persons, relatives of these accused and these entities were the proxies of the three accused to hold these properties,” the agency said.
It said the extradition of Mallya (65) has been ordered by the Westminster Magistrates’ Court and confirmed by the UK High Court.
“Since Mallya has not been permitted to file an appeal in the UK Supreme Court, his extradition to India becomes final,” it added.
It said Modi has also lost his extradition plea and is in London jail for the last 2.3 years.
Choksi, 62, mysteriously went missing on May 23 from Antigua and Barbuda, where he has been living as a civilian since 2018, and later surfaced in neighboring Dominica, from where India is trying to deport him. Used to be.
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