The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has arrested Amarnath Dutta of Kolkata in connection with a fraudulent bank guarantee scam involving over ₹100 crore. The case relates to the submission of fake guarantees to the SECI by a subsidiary of Reliance Power.
ED makes third arrest in fake bank guarantee case.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has arrested Kolkata resident Amarnath Dutta in a major action related to a fraudulent bank guarantee scam involving over ₹100 crore. The case relates to the submission of a fraudulent bank guarantee to the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) by a subsidiary of Reliance Power Ltd. The ED arrested Amarnath Dutta on November 6th under charges of money laundering.
The agency says that Dutta, who posed as a trade finance consultant, was actually a key player in the entire fraud. He, along with former Reliance Power CFO Ashok Pal and Partha Sarathi Biswal, prepared the fake bank guarantees.
The ED produced Amarnath Dutta in Delhi's Patiala House Court, where the court remanded him to ED custody for four days. The matter came to light when the SECI investigated a bank guarantee submitted by a subsidiary of Reliance Power and discovered it to be completely fraudulent.
The SECI filed an FIR in this matter with the Economic Offences Wing of the Delhi Police. The ED subsequently launched a money laundering investigation based on this FIR. The investigation revealed that Reliance Power had provided fraudulent bank guarantees and fake bank confirmation letters worth ₹68 crore. This resulted in a loss of over ₹100 crore to the SECI.
Revealed in the ED investigation
The ED investigation revealed that the accused created a spoof email domain, sbi.17313@s-bi.co.in , to use the identity of SBI to convince SECI that the bank guarantee was genuine.
Not only this, many more fake bank domains have also been found in the investigation, such as –
lndiabank.in
- lndusindbank.in
- pnblndia.in
- psdbank.co.in
- siliguripnb.co.in
- lobbank.co.in
- unionbankofIndia.co.in
The names of all these websites are similar to those of real banks, but minor changes have been made in one or two letters in them deliberately, so that no one gets suspicious.
ED has made three arrests so far in this case, which are as follows:
- Parth Sarathi Biswal, MD, M/s Biswal Tradelink Pvt. Ltd. (first arrest)
- Ashok Kumar Pal, former CFO, Reliance Power Ltd. (second arrest)
- Amarnath Dutta, finance consultant (third arrest)
ED is now trying to find out where the money from this scam was used, who all were involved in it, and who benefited from this fraud.
