Mumbai: A special court here on Tuesday remanded Subhash Shankar Parab, an aide of fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi, in CBI custody till April 26 in a Rs 7,000-crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud case.
Parab was deported to India from Cairo in Egypt earlier in the day, as per the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officials.
He was a deputy general manager (finance) at Firestar Diamond, a firm owned by Nirav Modi.
After his arrival in India in the morning, Parab was produced before special CBI judge V C Barde.
Special prosecutor A Limousin, representing the central probe agency, sought his custody for 14 days. Parab was deputy general manager at Firestar from April 2015 onwards and looked after banking-related activities of the three accused firms, namely, Diamonds R US, Stellar Diamond and Solar Exports, the CBI told the court. More specifically, he headed the banking operations department which prepared applications for Letters of Undertaking (LoUs) along with supporting documents at his instructions, the CBI said.
Parab was aware that these three firms did not have any credit facilities with the PNB and they were not providing 100 per cent cash margin for the issuance of LoUs, it said.
The central probe agency also claimed that he was instrumental in handling financial affairs of six Hong Kong-based and 13 Dubai-based “dummy” companies floated by Nirav Modi. The issuance of fraudulent LoUs and “circular transactions” through the dummy companies caused a wrongful loss of Rs 6,498.20 crore to the PNB, a public sector bank, the CBI said.
Parab, who reported directly to Nirav Modi, “actively conspired” with other co-accused including bank officials for the issuance of LoUs without complying with bank guidelines, the agency said.
—PTI

Press Trust of India