New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate has arrested the managing director of an Odisha-based company that allegedly ran a “fake” bank guarantee issuance racket for business groups, including providing an alleged Rs 68 crore assurance for a Reliance Group company, official sources on Saturday said.
The federal probe agency had launched searches in this money laundering case against a company named Biswal Tradelink located in Bhubaneswar on Friday.
Biswal Tradelink Managing Director Partha Sarathi Biswal was taken into custody from Bhubaneswar on Friday under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), the sources said.
The case filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) stems from a November, 2024 FIR of the Delhi Police Economic Offences Wing (EOW).
The ED had on Friday launched searches at the company’s three premises in Bhubaneswar and one “associate” entity in Kolkata.
Agency sources alleged that the company was engaged in the activity of issuance of “fake” bank guarantees against a commission of eight per cent.
They said that a bank guarantee of Rs 68.2 crore submitted to the Solar Energy Corporation of India Limited (SECI) on behalf of Reliance NU BESS Limited, a subsidiary of Reliance Power, was found to be “fake”.
The company was formerly known as Maharashtra Energy Generation Limited.
The ED seized some documents related to this transaction during the recent searches against the Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group companies in Mumbai, the sources said.
A Reliance Group spokesperson had said on Friday that Reliance Power has been a “victim of fraud, forgery and cheating conspiracy” in this case and it has made due disclosures in this context to the stock exchanges on November 7, 2024.
The spokesperson said that a criminal complaint was lodged by them against the third party (accused company) with the Delhi Police EOW in October, 2024 and the “due process” of law will follow.
The sources said similar suspicious financial transactions with multiple companies have been traced and this was being investigated.
The company is alleged to have been having multiple undisclosed bank accounts and carrying transactions disproportionate to its declared turnover. The agency is understood to have detected about seven “undisclosed” bank accounts of the company.
It was found that the company was using an email domain — s-bi.co.in — instead of the original sbi.co.in to create a “facade” of genuineness that the communication is being sent by the State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest lender.
The fake domain was used to send “forged” communication to SECI, impersonating the SBI, the sources said.
It is understood that the ED has written to the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) seeking domain registration details of the fake email domain.
The ED’s preliminary investigation, as per the sources, has indicated that the Odisha-based company has also facilitated “fake” bills for commission and uses multiple “undisclosed” bank accounts.
Suspicious transactions worth crores of rupees has been done through these bank accounts, they said.
The Odisha-based company is a “mere paper entity” as its registered office is a residential property belonging to a relative and no company records were found at the address during the searches, the sources had said.
Agency sources had claimed that key individuals of the company were using the Telegram app in a ‘disappearing messages’ enabled mode in order to “conceal” their communications.
