New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate Friday arrested the Chief Financial Officer of Reliance Power, a group company of the Reliance Group controlled by businessman Anil Ambani.
The accused, named Ashok Kumar Pal, was arrested as part of a money laundering probe related to the submission of fake bank guarantees to Solar Energy Corporation of India Limited, a government of India enterprise in the tendering process.
Pal was arrested after questioning at the agency’s headquarters Friday evening and was produced before a Special CBI judge in Delhi on Saturday. The court granted the agency custody for two days.
The agency’s money laundering charges stem from a case filed by the Delhi Police Economic Offences Wing in November last year, based on a complaint from Reliance NUBESS Limited, a subsidiary of Reliance Power, against one Odisha-based businessman, Partha Sarathi Biswal and his firm Biswal Tradelink Private Limited (BTPL).
In the complaint, it was alleged that Biswal claimed his company had “strong financials” and “a good reputation” with banks and financial institutions, and hence it would arrange a bank guarantee for Rs 68.2 crore from a scheduled commercial bank, immediately helping Reliance Power in participating in the tendering process with SECI.
However, in reality, the bank guarantee turned out to be fake, and Reliance NUBESS Limited approached Delhi Police seeking a case. ED had earlier arrested Biswal in the same case, on the complaint of the Reliance Power subsidiary, and he is in judicial custody.
The latest action coincides with intensive probes against Anil Ambani-controlled Reliance Group and its group companies by the ED and the Central Bureau of Investigation. Both agencies have carried out raids at premises linked to Anil Ambani and people associated with Reliance group companies in the recent past.
Earlier last month, CBI filed a chargesheet against Anil Ambani in two 2022 cases related to collusion with the former Yes Bank managing director Rana Kapoor, which also form the basis of a money laundering case against Anil Ambani.
Reliance Power on its website introduces Pal as a qualified chartered accountant with over 25 years of extensive hands-on experience, who has been with the firm for over seven years.
Sources in the Enforcement Directorate said that Pal played a crucial role in the diversion of funds from Reliance Power, a publicly listed company on the stock exchange.
“He played a crucial role in submitting a bogus bank guarantee of over Rs 68 crore to SECI, with an intention to cheat this PSU. He played a crucial role in the planning, supervision, funding, and concealment of the forged BG scheme used in the SECI tender,” an ED official said.
Additionally, he said, Pal’s role was central in selecting Biswal Tradelink to provide the fake bank guarantees, despite BTPL being virtually a non-existent entity, operating from a residential address, and lacking any proven track record in bank guarantees.
Explaining the fraud committed by Pal on behalf of Reliance Power, an ED official said the firm submitted a bank guarantee purportedly issued by the Manila branch of FirstRand Bank, even though there is no branch of FirstRand Bank in the Philippines.
“He played a crucial part in using the services of a fake BG racket which uses fake and spoofed domains of commercial banks of India, such as sbi.17313@s-bi.co.in. This is not the official bank domain but a look-alike created by inserting a hyphen into ‘sbi’ (i.e., ‘s-bi’). The fake BG racket used by Ashok Pal also uses lookalike bank domains such as lndianbank.in, lndusindbank.in, pnblndia.in, psdbank.co.in, siliguripnb.co.in, Iobbank.co.in and unionbankoflndia.co.in, each employing single-character swaps (notably ‘l’ in place of ‘i’) or minor textual tweaks intended to pass as official visually. The sole utility of these domains is to impersonate banks in emails/letters, thereby projecting forged instruments as genuine,” the official said.
The findings of the ED leading to the arrest, however, contrast with the FIR registered by the Delhi Police EOW, where Pal himself was the complainant as a representative of the Reliance Power subsidiary. This FIR is the predicate offence for the money laundering case in which Pal has now been arrested.
Predicate offences are cases registered by investigative agencies under sections scheduled in the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002.
“It is clear that accused persons had dishonest intention from the very beginning and for that reason, the accused persons in connivance with each other induced the complainant to release payment of Rs 5.4 crore after deduction of TDS of Rs 50 lakh towards commission/service charges for arranging BG for Rs 68.2 crore. But the confirmation dated 10.09.2024 and endorsement dated 11.09.2024 regarding BG for Rs 68.2 crore purportedly issued by State Bank of India CAG-II Branch, New Delhi were not genuine documents and that the same were fake/forged documents,” Pal had alleged in the police complaint leading to registration of the FIR in November last year.
“Thus, the accused persons had dishonest intention from the very beginning and they had no intention to fulfill their assurances and promises. Besides, I also incurred huge cost & expenditure for arrangement of funds for the purpose of payment of consideration amount. The accused persons caused me huge wrongful loss of money. The accused persons have made wrongful gain. Hence, the accused persons have committed the offence of ‘Cheating’ punishable u/s 318(4) BNS 2023 (420 IPС),” he had alleged.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
Also read: Why Bombay High Court upheld SBI decision to report Anil Ambani to RBI for ‘fraud’ in RCom case