New Delhi, Oct 11: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has arrested the Chief Financial Officer of Anil Ambani’s Reliance Power in a money laundering case linked to the issuance of an alleged fake bank guarantee worth Rs 68 crore, official sources said on Saturday.
Official sources said, Reliance Power CFO Ashok Pal was taken into custody on Friday night under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) after being questioned by the agency. He will be produced before a special court on Saturday, where the ED will seek his custodial remand for further interrogation.
The case pertains to a bank guarantee of Rs 68.2 crore submitted to the Solar Energy Corporation of India Limited (SECI) on behalf of Reliance NU BESS Limited, a subsidiary of Reliance Power, which was later found to be “fake”. The company was formerly known as Maharashtra Energy Generation Limited.
As per investigators, the accused company allegedly behind providing the “fake” bank guarantees was identified as Odisha-based Biswal Tradelink, which is said to have operated a racket of issuing fake guarantees for various business groups. In August, the ED carried out searches against the company and its promoters and arrested its Managing Director Partha Sarathi Biswal.
The money laundering case stems from a November 2024 FIR registered by Delhi Police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW). It was alleged that Biswal Tradelink was issuing fake bank guarantees against a commission of about 8 per cent.
The Reliance Group had earlier maintained that Reliance Power was a “victim of fraud, forgery and cheating conspiracy” in the case, and said it had disclosed the matter to the stock exchange on November 7, 2024. A Reliance spokesperson stated that a criminal complaint had already been lodged with the Delhi Police’s EOW in October 2024 against the third-party company and that the due process of law would follow.
ED sources also revealed that the Bhubaneswar-based company was using a fake email domain, s-bi.co.in, resembling sbi.co.in, to create the impression that communication was coming from the State Bank of India (SBI). This domain was allegedly used to send forged correspondence to SECI.
ED’s preliminary probe indicated that the company also facilitated fake bills for commissions and operated multiple undisclosed bank accounts, through which suspicious transactions worth crores of rupees were conducted. Officials further found that Biswal Tradelink was a “paper entity”, as its registered office was a residential property belonging to a relative of Biswal, with no actual company records available at the address. (KNC)
