Ratul Puri granted bail in Moser Baer bank fraud case

A Special Court on Friday granted bail to businessman Ratul Puri in Rs 354 crore Moser Baer bank fraud case.

Special Judge Sanjay Garg while allowing Puri's bail plea, directed him to give Rs 5 lakh bail bond and two sureties of the like amount to avail the bail.

He was recently granted bail in Rs 3,600 crore AgustaWestland VVIP chopper money laundering case.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had, in August earlier this year, filed a case against Puri, who is the former executive director of Moser Baer India Limited (MBIL), his father Deepak Puri and mother Nita Puri on a complaint filed by the Central Bank of India (CBI).

Based on the complaint, the ED had arrested Puri on August 19. The bank had accused Moser Baer and its director of defrauding the bank of Rs 354 crores. Besides the Puri family, others who have been booked for criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery, and corruption are Sanjay Jain and Vineet Sharma.

The ED had then filed a charge sheet against the accused in connection with the case.Moser Baer was involved in the manufacture of optical storage media like compact discs, DVDs, solid-state storage devices.

It had been taking loans from various banks since 2009 and went for debt restructuring a number of times, the Central Bank of India claimed in the complaint.

When the company was unable to pay the debt, a forensic audit was done and the account was declared as a "fraud" by the bank in April earlier this year.

"MBIL has committed fraud and cheated the complainant bank thereby making a wrongful gain to themselves and a wrongful loss to the lender bank which is a custodian of public money," the complaint read.

The bank, in its forensic audit, also found the funds granted by the banks were misused and misappropriated by MBIL and its directors for their own personal use.

"MBIL and its directors and promoters have also committed fraud in respect of reporting book debts, which were also one of the primary securities of the bank," it read.

The bank claimed that the company and its directors "forged and fabricated documents to induce Central Bank of India to release funds".