Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has made a fresh arrest, the third one in connection with a money laundering probe against businessman Anil Ambani’s group company, Reliance Power, linked to the issuance of an alleged fake bank guarantee of Rs. 68 crores, the media reported on Friday.
A person identified as Amar Nath Dutta was taken into custody on Thursday under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). A special court sent him to four days of the ED’s custody.
The probe agency had earlier arrested former Reliance Power CFO Ashok Kumar Pal and a private person, Partha Sarathi Biswal, MD of an Odisha-based company named Biswal Tradelink, as part of this investigation, the reports said.
The case pertains to a bank guarantee of Rs. 68.2 crore submitted to the Solar Energy Corporation of India Ltd (SECI) on behalf of Reliance NU BESS Ltd, a subsidiary of Reliance Power, a listed company, which was found to be “fake.” The company was formerly known as Maharashtra Energy Generation Ltd.
Biswal Tradelink, the ED had alleged, operated a racket to provide “fake” bank guarantees to business groups.
The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani (Reliance ADA) Group had earlier said Anil Ambani was “not on the Board of Reliance Power Limited for more than 3.5 years and is not concerned with this matter in any manner.”
The money laundering case stems from a November 2024 FIR of Delhi Police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW). It was alleged that the Biswal Tradelink was engaged in issuing “fake” bank guarantees against a commission of 8 percent.
The ED investigators found that Reliance NU BESS Ltd submitted a bank guarantee from the FirstRand Bank located in Manila, Philippines, but the said bank does not have a branch in that country.
Reliance Power had said earlier that it had been a “victim of fraud, forgery and cheating conspiracy” in this case and it had made due disclosures in this context to the stock exchange on November 7, 2024.
A group spokesperson had said a criminal complaint was lodged by them against the third party (accused company) with Delhi Police’s EOW in October 2024 and the “due process” of law would follow, the reports said.
Officials said the Bhubaneswar-based company (Biswal Tradelink) was using an email domain — s-bi.co.in — similar to sbi.co.in to create a “façade” of genuineness that the communication was being sent by the State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest lender.
The fake domain was used to send “forged” communication to the SECI, they said.
Biswal Tradelink, according to the ED, was a “mere paper entity” as its registered office was a residential property belonging to a relative of Biswal.