CBI likely to charge PNB ex-MD, other employees in Nirav Modi fraud case

Diamond jeweller Nirav Modi is under investigation for defrauding the Punjab National Bank of ₹12, 600 crore. His uncle Mehul Choksi is also being investigated, and both their passports have been suspended.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is all set to file its first chargesheet on Monday against a former managing director (MD) of Punjab National Bank and several other people in the ₹12,600-crore fraud allegedly perpetrated by jeweller Nirav Modi on the state-owned lender, officials said.

Nirav Modi is facing multiple investigations into one of the biggest frauds in the country’s banking history and is accused of defrauding India’s second biggest lender, Punjab National Bank, with the help of several bank employees. (Aniruddha Chowdhury/Mint File Photo)

“The chargesheet will be filed in the designated CBI court in Mumbai,” an agency official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said.

Names of more than half a dozen current and former officials, including a former managing director of the Punjab National Bank who is now the chairperson and MD of another public sector bank, of the country’s second-largest state lender will figure in the chargesheet, the official said.

Modi will also be named as accused in the charge sheet.

The probe agency registered a first information report (FIR) on January 31 pertaining to the fraudulent issuance of Letters of Undertaking (LoUs) worth over ₹6,400 crore against the diamond trader.

Following the first FIR, the agency lodged another FIR relating to the issuance of LoUs and foreign letters of credit to firms owned by Modi’s maternal uncle Mehul Choksi.

In March, the agency registered its third FIR in the fraud alleging that Modi and his two companies defrauded the financial institution of around ₹322 crore by misusing sanctioned credit limits.

These credit limits were provided to Modi’s firms – Firestar International Limited and Firestar Diamonds International Limited – between 2013 and 2017.

The agency has so far arrested 19 people – bank officials as well as executives from firms headed by Modi and Choksi – in this connection with the fraud.

Names of all the arrested accused will figure in the first chargesheet, the official said, followed by a supplementary chargesheet focusing on alleged fraud committed by Choksi’s companies.

Both Nirav and Choksi left the country in the first week of January along with their family members and have not returned since then despite repeated summons from the agency and the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which is probing money laundering charges in the fraud.

The government has suspended the passports of both Modi and Choksi in order to force them to return to India.