Enforcement Directorate
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Monday sent summons to several senior officers of Anil Ambani’s Reliance Group in connection with the investigation of money laundering. It is being told that Anil Ambani himself will also appear before the ED on Tuesday.
According to ET Now report, the big officers who have been summoned include names like Amitabh Jhunjhunwala and Satish Seth. The ED has so far issued at least 6 summons under the Money Laundering Prevention Act (PMLA).
ED has been searched before all these officers before. The agency suspects that these people played an important role in carrying out the transactions related to the bank’s debt scam. The impact of this news was also seen in the stock market. Reliance Infrastructure’s stock fell at around 5% to Rs 296.15 at 1:51 pm on Monday afternoon. At the same time, Reliance Power shares also broke around 5%.
Banks officials will also interrogate
The report said that the ED is now going to call the officials of about 20 government and private banks, who gave loans to the companies of Reliance Group. ED will inquire from them as to what steps they had done before giving loans and when companies did not repay the loan.
A senior official said, “We want to find out whether the banks had filed a criminal complaint against the default companies or not.” According to the report, the focus of the ED investigation will remain even after understanding what the banks adopted the credit assessment process while giving the loan, because many of these loans later became NPAs.
What is the case of 17,000 crore loan scam?
The ED’s money laundering investigation is related to a loan scam of around Rs 17,000 crore. These loans were given to Reliance Home Finance Limited (RHFL), Reliance Commercial Finance Limited (RCFL) and Reliance Communications (RCOM). According to the report, there is a loan of Rs 5,901 crore on RHFL, Rs 8,226 crore on RCFL and about Rs 4,105 crore on RCom.
These banks gave a loan of thousands of crores
In addition to Yes Bank, these companies include SBI, UCO Bank, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Bank of India and Punjab and Sindh Bank. In another incident related to this case, ED on Friday arrested Partha Sarathi Biswal, Managing Director of Biswal Tradalink Private Limited (BTPL) of Odisha. He is accused of preparing a fake bank guarantee of Rs 68 crore for a company of Reliance Group. In court, ED said that Biswal had received about Rs 5.40 crore from Reliance Power Limited instead of giving this guarantee. This guarantee was given for the tender of Solar Energy Corporation of India Limited (SECI).
The ED claims that the documents show that Biswal Tradalink and Reliance New Base had made this disturbance with each other, while Reliance New Base was describing themselves as cheated. Investigation revealed that the director of Biswal Tradalink was earlier associated with the Reliance Group.
In the August 1 raid, ED has also seized several suspected documents and digital devices. The ED alleges that Biswal Tradalink had opened many secret bank accounts and made much more transactions than their declared earnings. Fake directors were also used in this.
This FIR in Delhi Police was earlier on the complaint of Reliance New Base, in which BTPL was accused of cheating. But now ED suspects that both companies were found in this fraud. The Reliance Group issued a statement on Friday saying that it has worked honestly and has been a victim of fraud himself. The group said that it had informed the stock market in November 2024 and had filed a case against the third party in the Economic Offenses Wing of Delhi Police in October 2024.