A special court on Tuesday granted the CBI custody of Subhash Shankar Parab, a close confidante of fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi, till April 26 in the Punjab National Bank (PNB) multi–crore fraud.
Mr. Parab was arrested by the CBI and brought to Mumbai from Cairo on Tuesday morning. He was looking after the banking related activities of Mr. Modi’s companies namely M/s Diamond R US, M/s Solar Exports and M/s Stellar Diamonds. He was also the deputy general manager (operations) in M/s Firestar International Private Limited from April, 2015 till the registration of this case.
As per the CBI, “He had the knowledge that the three firms did not have any credit facilities with PNB and were not providing 100% cash margin for issuance of fraudulent letters of undertaking [LoUs].” The Central agency sought his custody for 14 days alleging that he was also instrumental in handling financials of six Hong Kong–based and 13 Dubai–based dummy companies floated by Mr. Modi, causing a loss of ₹6,498.20 crore to the PNB. He fled the country on January 1, 2018 before the scam broke out. An open non–bailable warrant and a red corner notice had been issued against him.
A chargesheet was filed on May 14, 2018 against 22 accused including Mr. Parab and the three firms under Sections 120B (whoever is a party to a criminal conspiracy to commit a punishable offence), 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant, or by banker), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the IPC and the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act. A supplementary chargesheet was filed adding Sections 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence) and 506 (criminal intimidation to cause death) of the IPC. Mr. Parab was cited as an absconding accused in both the chargesheets.
The other accused in the case are Mr. Modi, Neeshal Modi, Ami Modi, Mehul Choksi and partners of all the three companies, Gokulnath Shetty (retired deputy manager) of PNB, Manoj Kharat (SWO) and other unknown persons for cheating and also abuse of official position by public servants of PNB and wrongful loss of ₹280.70 crore to the bank by issuing LoUs to overseas branches of Indian banks favouring Mr. Modi’s firms during 2017.
