Mumbai: A Special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court on Monday allowed an application by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) seeking issuance of letters rogatory (LR) to six countries to get information regarding wealth, investment and business details of diamantaire Nirav Modi in the Rs 11,400-crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud case. LR is a formal request from a court of a sovereign nation to a court of another sovereign nation for judicial assistance in a case.
The ED, in its application, sought issuance of LR under the PMLA for recovery or seizure of proceeds of crime and collection of documents, evidence lying in Hong Kong, the USA, the UK, the UAE, South Africa and Singapore, which are required in connection with the investigation.
PMLA judge M.S. Azmi, after hearing ED counsel Hiten Venegaonkar, said, “The application is allowed.”
The ED told the court that Modi established various firms. He became an integrated diamond manufacturer who bought rough diamonds, sold polished ones and other stones, and also designed jewellery.
“He spread his business operations in various countries, including Hong Kong, USA, UK, UAE, South Africa and Singapore. He had apparently got issued multiple high value letters of undertaking (LoUs) in favour of his firms and companies from the PNB, which resulted in disbursement of funds as per the SWIFT messages sent by PNB,” the ED told the court. SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Teleco-mmunications) is a messaging network for securely transmitting instructions for all financial transactions through a standardised system of codes. “It was later found by the bank that the same were issued fraudulently since there was no record of the said LoUs in the bank’s records,” it said.
The ED said that by this criminal act of cheating and conspiracy, the accused generated huge proceeds of crime amounting to Rs 6,498 crore.
