The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is conducting searches at Delhi and Noida premises of Ratul Puri and other accused in a case related to alleged loss of Rs 787.25 crore to Punjab National Bank (PNB) and other consortium of banks.
A case was registered on a complaint from PNB against Moser Baer company, where Puri was the executive director till 2012, and others including its directors. Some unknown persons and bank officials have also been named by the PNB.
These raids are in connection with the fresh case. Puri is the nephew of senior Congress leader Kamal Nath.
“In the view of Covid-19, all precautions regarding health and safety are being taken while conducting the searches including provision of PPE kits to all the search teams,” CBI Spokesperson RK Gaur said.
Moser Baer is involved in the manufacture of optical storage media like compact discs, DVDs, solid state storage devices.
The latest FIR by the CBI is second against Puri; he was earlier booked in August 2019 in Rs 354 crore Central Bank fraud. In its complaint, the Central Bank had claimed that Moser Baer was taking loans from various banks since 2009 and went for debt restructuring a number of times. When it was unable to pay the debt, a forensic audit was done and the account was declared as “fraud” by the bank on April 20, 2019, it further alleged.
In October 2019, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had filed a charge sheet against Puri, alleging that he was involved in bank frauds amounting to Rs 7,900 crore.
In its charge sheet, the ED had claimed that Puri was living a lavish lifestyle with the banks’ money, which included holidays abroad, travelling in private jets and visiting night clubs.
Puri is a key accused in money laundering probe in AgustaWestland scam as well.