In a fresh pot of trouble that has brewed specifically for diamantaire Nirav Modi, the Interpol has issued a Red Corner Notice against the Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud accused and his employee Subhash Parab. The notice was issued on request of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) which is in no mood to leave the businessman go scot free. Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi cheated the state-run bank of about Rs 13,000 Crore through fraudulent issuance of Letters of Undertaking and Foreign Letters of Credit. They are both absconding since the first week of January this year.
A Red Corner Notice is a request by a member country to locate and arrest an individual pending extradition. It is issued by the General Secretariat of the Interpol, on request of a member country's National Central Bureau. In this case, the Interpol has asked its 192 member countries to arrest or detain the person if spotted in their countries after which extradition or deportation proceedings can begin. Police all across the world have been alerted. The Notice however, is not an international arrest warrant. Interpol cannot compel any member country to arrest an individual who is the subject of the Notice. Bringing the fugitive back to India will now become easier for the CBI.
PNB finds 54 officials at fault for Modi scam
Meanwhile, an internal investigation report at PNB has indicted the management, circle and zonal officers, treasury and forex departments and the international banking division along with auditors for ignoring widespread violations, unethical practices and dereliction of responsibilities that led the bank to such a “catastrophe”. PNB's audit department had checked the SWIFT messages logs, a single activity would have nailed the whole act at the incipient stage, the report said. The report added that the bank didn't verify the commission vouchers for opening for Foreign Letters of Credit (FLCs) and subsequently, wrong SWIFT log generation was sent by the Mumbai circle office to the zonal office and to the head office in Delhi.
The investigations showed that PNB had 1804 pending cases of bill of entry (BOEs) worth Rs 1.14 Lakh Crore out of which the outstanding BOEs of Modi's Firestar Group and Choksi's Gitanjali Group were worth Rs 99,031 Crore. The report said alarm bells should have rung in the circle and zonal offices when import-export and fixed deposit business of the branch was skyrocketing. Several senior officers from the circle office visited the branch between 2010 and 2017, but “no senior officer has made any adverse comment on SWIFT, DMS (daily monitoring system) reports, specific instances of unauthorised business, etc.”
