The Central Bureau of Investigation has filed a case against fugitive diamond trader Mehul Choksi and his firm Gitanjali Gems Ltd and four others for allegedly causing a wrongful loss of Rs 22.06 crore to the Industrial Finance Corporation of India (IFCI).
Choksi and his nephew Nirav Modi are accused of a Rs 13,600-crore fraud at the Punjab National Bank. Both Choksi and Modi left India in January 2018, just before the scam came to light.
In the fresh first information report, the CBI has said that between 2014 and 2018, Gitanjali Gems took a loan of Rs 25 crore from the IFCI, functioning under the finance ministry, after pledging shares, gold and diamond jewellery and stones two times the value of the loan as security.
However, after the company defaulted on the loan, the IFCI found out that the gold, diamond and stones pledged by Choksi’s company were of inferior quality and that their actual valuation was 98 per cent less than shown by the company.
“Mehul C Choksi, with dishonest and fraudulent intention, colluded with the valuers and got the valuation of the pledged jewels done with an exorbitant and inflated value. Further it also came to the light that the diamonds are low-quality, lab-prepared chemical vapour diamonds and other inferior colour stones and not real gemstones,” the FIR read.
The IFCI classified the account of Gitanjali Gems as a non-performing asset on June 30, 2018. Choksi is currently in Antigua and Barbuda, where he is facing extradition at…
