by Harish Gupta, National Editor, Lokmat Group
Nirav Modi plot getting murkier
Retired PNB official Shetty also untraceable
IT raids report against Nirav Modi gathering dust
Opposition considering JPC probe
Nirav Modi reminds of Ketan Parekh scam
Harish Gupta
New Delhi, Feb 16
Even as two senior ministers, Rajnath Singh and Prakash Javadekar, joined the ranks to attack the UPA government for the Rs 11400 crores scam, the Opposition parties are veering round to the view that a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) be constituted to probe the scam.
The reason for a JPC is that the PNB fraud case comes dangerously close to the 18 years old Ketan Parekh scam during the Vajpayee era. Ketan Parekh was the first conman to use the modus operandi of discounting a pay order deemed to be issued by one bank at another bank to raise money for trading in share market and jacking up prices astronomically. The end result was that when the Madhavpura Mercantile Cooperative Bank (MMCB) of Gujrat couldn't pay the discounted money to Bank of India, the whole scam was busted. The markets crashed and after the huge uproar, the then PM Vajpayee was forced to set up a JPC. Interestingly, Ketan Parekh had worked with securities' scamster Harshad Mehta of the 1990s era who incidentally was also a Gujrati and a shrewed businessman. He started trading in securities and took monies against those government securities to jack up share market.
Now 18 years later, another Gujrati, Nirav Modi, surfaced on the scene and used the same technology of “discounting” Letters of Understanding to con banks. The entire government machinery woke up from the slumber with PNB suspending 20 officials, Ministry of External Affairs suspending Nirav Modi's passport for one month, CBI and ED conducting extensive raids today.
But there is no trace of the key players; Nirav Modi, the king pin and the key PNB official who connived, former PNB Deputy Manager Gokulnath Shetty. Both are untraceable. Gokulnath shetty was posted at the on March 31, 2010 at PNB”s foreign exchange department at Brady House Mumbai. He retired in 2017 and three times his transfer orders were issued during 2013-17 as per the CVC guidelines that all key persons holding sensitive posts be shifted after three years. But each time, these orders were canceled due to “internal reasons”. K R Kamath (2009-2014), Gauri Shankar (Feb.15-Aug 15) and Usha Ananthsubramanian (Aug 15-May 17) who were at the helms of the PNB are also under the scanner of the CBI besides the current MD &CEO Sunil Mehta.
What has come as a shock to the investigators is Nirav Modi continued to thrive even after the massive raids by the Income Tax department on his premises and also of Mehul Chowksi in January 2017- two months after Demonetization. While the DRI and Customs had slapped a separate case against him of duty evasion which he paid, the IT department found Rs 4900 crores unexplained funds in his accounts. The DRI & IT had probed Nirav Modi and Chowksi several times between 2013-17 and each time he came out with flying colours. This was despite IT department finding 10 types of illegal modus operandi adopted by Nirav Modi and clearly stated that “sources and creditworthiness of these fund remained unexplained. The IT report also pointed out that international transactions to the tune of Rs 5100 crores had not reported by Modi. Incidentally, the IT report is based on the probe done by the DRI during 2013-14 which had first detected the custom duty evasion.
However, it is yet to be seen whether the ruling BJP will go in for the JPC probe demand.
Ends
