The CBI has booked retired deputy manager Gokulnath Shetty, the most accused within the Rs 13,000-crore Punjab commercial bank fraud allegedly perpetrated by Mehul Choksi and Nirav Modi, during a fresh case of receiving a bribe of Rs 1.08 crore from Rishika Financials that arranged bank guarantees for Gitanjali Gems, officials said.
It is alleged that the owner of Rishika Financials, Debajyoti Dutta, was within the business of arranging quotes of Letters of Undertaking (LoUs) from foreign funding banks, they said on Monday.
The officials said that after getting confirmation from Dutta, Shetty wont to issue LoUs using the international banking messaging service, SWIFT.
Dutta wont to work for Gitanjali Gems, promoted by Choksi, and had allegedly raised bills of 0.05 per cent of the LoUs issued for the firm as brokerage, they said.
The amount wont to get credited to Dutta’s accounting from which 40 per cent, over Rs 1.08 crore, was allegedly paid to Shetty between 2014 and 2017, the officials said.
LoU may be a guarantee which is given by an issuing bank to Indian banks having branches abroad to grant short-term credit to an applicant.
In case of default, the bank issuing the LoU has got to pay the liability to the credit-giving bank along side accruing interest.
The companies of Modi and Choksi took loans from banks abroad on the idea of LoUs but didn’t repay them transferring the liability on Punjab commercial bank (PNB).
It is alleged that Shetty bypassed PNB’s core banking industry, Finacle, and issued LoUs fraudulently, the officials said.
Shetty, who is imagined to have played a key role within the Rs 13,700-crore loan fraud while working as deputy manager at PNB’s Brady House branch in Mumbai, was arrested in March, 2018.
