Nirav Modi is a global diamond jewelry house established in 2010 by founder, Nirav Modi. He is being investigated in a $44 million fraud case at Punjab National Bank (PNB).
Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra is seeking legal opinion with respect to terminating her contract with the brand in light of allegations of financial fraud against Nirav Modi.
First Indian jeweler on the covers of Christie’s and Sotheby’s Catalogues
Nirav Modi is also a first Indian jeweler to have been featured on the covers of Christie’s and Sotheby’s Catalogues. His side interests are reading many daily papers each day. He additionally likes to read magazines, writing, and verse.
Nirav Modi entered the Forbes list of billionaires
Modi is ranked 1,234 in Forbes’s world’s billionaires list for 2017, and 85 in India. His financial worth is estimated at $1.73 billion through his jewelry design and retail businesses, according to the Forbes website.
Just one year after becoming the first Indian to feature on the cover of a Christie’s auction catalog in 2010 for a Golconda diamond necklace that fetched $3.56 million at its auction in Hong Kong. In October 2012, his Riviere Diamond Necklace was sold for $5.1 million at a Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong. In 2013, Modi entered the Forbes list of billionaires.
CBI launched an investigation into Modi
In February 2018, the Indian government’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) launched an investigation into Modi. The CBI is acting on a complaint from the Punjab National Bank, a state banking institution, that alleges Modi and his partners defrauded the bank for 280 Crore (approximately USD 40 million) by conspired with bank officials to fraudulently obtain Letters of Undertaking for making payments to overseas suppliers. While 280 Crore is the fraud that has devolved to date, the potential liability of loss to Punjab National Bank goes well upto 11000 crore.
The bank has alleged that Modi and his business partners were involved in fraudulently issuing Letters of Undertakings – or bank guarantees – at the bank’s Mid Corporate Branch in Mumbai’s Brady House. The enforcement directorate (ED) is looking into the case of fraud that the CBI has registered against Nirav Modi and his associates for cheating over 280 crore as cited by Punjab National Bank (PNB).Although the case is still under investigation but Nirav Modi’s stores will remain open and business is as usual at his stores around the globe including the one at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore.
Where is the Rs 11,360 crore?
The question that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED) sleuths are asking Nirav Modi’s associates and Punjab National Bank (PNB) repeatedly over the course of sustained interrogation is: Where is the Rs 11,360 crore? The investigators believe the trade mentioned by the companies is a sham and it was purely meant to cover up bogus purchases and sales.
The major portion of cash, sources said, may have already ended up in secret accounts in the Bahamas and Jersey, a tax haven situated between England and France. The income tax authorities have shared some details of Nirav’s offshore activities, revealing that he was operating several accounts in Mauritius, Singapore, the Bahamas and Jersey, which could have been used to park the money siphoned off from PNB.
Huge sums by way of Letters of Undertaking (LoUs) were also raised in Antwerp, Frankfurt, Bahrain and Hong Kong which could have been laundered by moving back and forth through shell companies before reaching the final destination.
Nirav and his uncle Mehul Choksi
Nirav and his uncle Mehul Choksi also used three ghost companies — Mumbai Gems Private Limited, Shreeji Multitrade Private Limited and Jain Diamonds Private Limited — to provide them with accommodation entries. Basically, the entries were bogus purchases to launder money. Further, the income tax investigation conducted last year had revealed that the Nirav Modi brand, through its SEZ units at Surat had claimed huge deductions to the tune of hundreds of crores in the past six years.
UCO Bank has offered 146 letters of credit to Choksi
UCO Bank has offered 146 letters of credit to Choksi-owned Gitanjali Gems, Gili India and Nakshatra after it received SWIFT messaged from a PNB branch in Mumbai. On the question of PNB shifting blame to foreign branches of Indian banks for not raising an alarm in the complaint filed with the CBI, Singh said it is a completely wrong interpretation since these overseas branches had nothing to do with Choksi or Nirav, but were dealing with PNB.
Nirav Modi Letter To PNB
Nirav Modi left the country along with his family in the first week of January, before the alleged scam became public.
In a letter Mr Modi wrote on February 15/16 to the Punjab National Bank management, he pegged the money his companies owe to the bank at under Rs. 5,000 crore.
Mr Modi also said the dues were much less than what the bank has claimed, and that his relatives booked in the cases filed by the central agencies had nothing to do with the operations of the firms under their scanner.
“The erroneously cited liability resulted in a media frenzy which led to immediate search and seizure of operations, and which in turn resulted in Firestar International and Firestar Diamond International effectively ceasing to be going-concerns,” he wrote in the letter.
“This thereby jeopardised our ability to discharge the dues of the group to the banks,” Mr Modi wrote in the letter.
The PNB, the second largest state-run bank, had, on February 14, informed the exchanges about detecting a $ 1.77 billion fraud at its Brady House branch in Mumbai, and named the firms led by Mr Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi’s Gitanjali Group, and some other diamond and jewellery merchants as suspects.
