3 'tainted' brady house branch officers remanded in CBI custody till March 3

Mumbai: A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court on Tuesday remanded three suspended officers from Punjab National Bank’s (PNB) forex department, chief manager Bechu Tiwari; manager scale II, Yashwant Joshi; and scale I officer, export, Praful Sawant in CBI custody till March 3.

CBI counsel A. Limosin contended before the court that the agency suspects a larger conspiracy in this matter and the accused allegedly abused their official position in PNB and helped give undue pecuniary advantage to M/s Diamond R US, M/s Solar Exports and M/s Stellar Diamonds, owned by diamantaire Nirav Modi, Neeshal Modi, Ami Modi and Mehul Choksi, and caused wrongful loss of thousands of crores to the PNB in 2017.

Mr Limosin argued that Tiwari was working as the forex department in charge from 2015 to 2017 but he did not monitor the fraudulent and illegal Letter of Understandings that were being issued by Gokulnath Shetty. He added that Tiwari deliberately didn’t do any follow up nor took any steps to see why his instructions were not being followed by other accused. “His deliberate acts of omission let to the continuance of concealment and large scale liabilities of PNB to the foreign banks,” said Mr Limosin.

It was alleged before the court that from 2015 to 2018, Joshi didn’t submit daily reports in respect of SWIFT messages and aided and abetted in the conspiracy to cheat PNB. According to the CBI, due to this act the fraud could not be detected immediately.

Similarly, Sawant did not check the details of SWIFT messages sent daily.