The Central Bureau of Investigation(CBI) has claimed to have conducted a search on Wednesday night and recovered documents Letter of Undertakings(LoUs) related to the Punjab National Bank(PNB) scam from a small room in a chawl in Wadala, Mumbai.
A spokesperson of the investigating agency has claimed that the information about this room and its contents were revealed by two people during interrogation.
On February 14, PNB had disclosed the fraud wherein billionaire jeweller Nirav Modi and associates allegedly acquired fraudulent letters of undertaking (LoUs) from its Brady House branch in Fort area for overseas credit from other lenders.
Earlier this week, PNB had said the amount of unauthorised transactions could go up by more than Rs 1,300 crore from earlier estimate of Rs 11,400 crore.
The state-run PNB has the highest exposure to Gitanjali Gems also at under Rs 1,000 crore, but ICICI Bank, the second largest with an exposure of over Rs 600 crore is the lead bank in the consortium.
In a statement, the largest private lender had said it has an exposure to Gitanjali, but not to firms promoted by Nirav Modi, who is the alleged kingpin of the nearly Rs 13,000-crore fraud perpetrated at one of the branches of PNB in the financial capital.
(With inputs from Ushinor Majumdar and agency)
