ED makes 3rd arrest in Reliance Power fake bank guarantee linked PMLA case

The Enforcement Directorate has made a fresh and the third arrest in connection with a money laundering probe against businessman Anil Ambani's group company Reliance Power linked to issuance of an alleged fake bank guarantee of Rs 68 crore, official sources said on Friday.

A person identified as Amar Nath Dutta was taken into custody on Thursday under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). A special court sent him to four days of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) custody, they said.

The federal probe agency has arrested former Reliance Power CFO Ashok Kumar Pal and a private person Partha Sarathi Biswal, MD of an Odisha-based company named Biswal Tradelink, as part of this investigation.

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, a listed company, which was found to be "fake". The company was formerly known as Maharashtra Energy Generation Limited.

Biswal Tradelink, the ED had alleged, operated a racket for providing "fake" bank guarantees for business groups.

The Reliance Group had earlier said Anil Ambani was "not on the Board of Reliance Power Limited for more than 3.5 years and is not concerned with this matter in any manner."  The money laundering case stems from a November 2024 FIR of Delhi Police's Economic Offences Wing (EOW). It was alleged that the Biswal Tradelink was engaged in issuing "fake" bank guarantees against a commission of 8 per cent.

Probe found that Reliance NU BESS Ltd. submitted a bank guarantee from the FirstRand Bank located in Manila, Philippines, but the said bank does not have a branch in that country, as per the ED.

Reliance Power had said earlier that it had been a "victim of fraud, forgery and cheating conspiracy" in this case and it had made due disclosures in this context to the stock exchange on November 7, 2024.

A group spokesperson had said a criminal complaint was lodged by them against the third party (accused company) with Delhi Police's EOW in October 2024 and the "due process" of law would follow.

The ED sources had said that the Bhubaneswar-based company (Biswal Tradelink) was using an email domain -- s-bi.co.in -- similar to sbi.co.in to create a "facade" of genuineness that the communication was being sent by the State Bank of India (SBI), the country's largest lender.

The fake domain was used to send "forged" communication to the SECI, they said.

Biswal Tradelink, according to the ED, was a "mere paper entity" as its registered office was a residential property belonging to a relative of Biswal.