An arrested Punjab National Bank (PNB) official has revealed that he received two gold coins and one pair of gold and diamond earrings in October last year as gift from Nirav Modi.
He received the gifts after he continued to issue fraudulent Letter of Undertaking (LoUs) for the billionaire businessman, who is the prime accused in the PNB scam, reported The Times of India.
Yashwant Joshi, the ex-PNB official, had worked as manager with the forex department of PNB, Brady House Branch during 2015-2018 period. He was associated with arrested retired deputy manager of the bank’s forex department Gokulnath Shetty, the TOI report added.
Shetty worked with the branch for close to 7 years and he retired in May 2017. According to the CBI, Joshi and Shetty were issuing fraudulent LoUs to Modi without entering the details in the core banking system or without taking collateral security.
The CBI told the court the Joshi revealed everything duting interrogation and the gold coins and earrings were recovered from Joshi’s house. An application issued by CBI reads:“This indicates that he was in collusion with the beneficiary accused persons to cheat the bank. He also obtained illegal gratification from the beneficiary party for continuing issuance of fraudulent LoUs."
Earlier on Saturday, Nirav Modi, who is at the centre of the Rs 12,700-crore scam at the Punjab National Bank (PNB), had alleged that he was right in being concerned about the "unfairness of process", going by the way a woman employee of his firm was arrested.
Modi, against whom a special court on Saturday issued a non-bailable warrant (NBW), wrote two letters to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in response to summonses last month.
"A lady executive (Kavita Mankikar) of my organisation has been arrested by the CBI illegally, in complete violation of the Criminal Procedure Code. And when the liberty of a female is not been priced (sic) by the investigating agencies, my concern for my safety and for the unfairness in the process is not in any manner misplaced," Modi wrote to Archana Salaye, Assistant Director of ED, on February 26.
Mankikar's lawyer had claimed that she was arrested at 8 PM, while as per the law, a woman cannot be arrested after sunset.
Modi wrote two letters to the ED, one on February 22 and another four days later. The ED had issued summonses to him on February 15, February 17 and February 22, asking him to appear before the agency.
On January 31, the CBI registered an FIR against Nirav Modi, his companies, and diamond jeweller Mehul Choksi in connection with the PNB fraud.
The CBI has also arrested Vipul Ambani, president (finance) of Nirav Modi's Firestar Diamond; Kavita Mankikar (executive assistant and authorised signatory of three firms -- Diamond R US, Stellar Diamond, Solar Exports), Arjun Patil (senior executive, Firestar group) and Rajesh Jindal, then head of the Brady House branch of PNB.
Among those arrested in connection with Choksi's firms are Nakshatra group and Gitanjali group CFO Kapil Khandelwal and Gitanjali group manager Niten Shahi.
(With inputs from PTI)
