The Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Reliance Power, Ashok Pal, on Friday night under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in a case of alleged fake bank guarantee of ₹68 crore.
Pal was questioned at Delhi office of the ED before being arrested. He will be produced before a judge of a special court at 9.30 a.m., a senior ED official told a leading English daily.
The enforcement agency has alleged that Pal, who had been empowered, along with others, to finalise, approve, sign, and execute all documents for Solar Energy Corporation of India’s (SECI) Battery Energy Storage System tenders, played a crucial role in “diversion of funds” from a public listed company (Reliance Power Limited) by putting in “bogus” Bank Guarantee (BG) of over ₹68 crore to SECI, “with an intention to cheat”.
“He played a crucial role in the planning, supervision, funding, and concealment of the forged BG scheme used in the SECI tender,” said an agency source.
ED has further alleged in its report that Pal was instrumental in selecting Biswal Tradelink Pvt Ltd (BTPL), a small entity operating from a residential address with no credible BG track record, to provide the fake BG. Without any vendor diligence, a “none-genuine” BG was executed, the agency source added.
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The director of BTPL, Partha Sarathi Biswal, is already in judicial custody for his alleged involvement in the diversion of money through “fake transport invoices”. The ED has also found that Biswal played a “crucial part” in taking the services of a fake BG racket that used fake and spoofed domains of Indian commercial banks.
“He approved releases and facilitated paperwork via Telegram/WhatsApp, outside normal SAP/vendor master workflow. The degree of fraud can be gauged from the fact that the Reliance Power group submitted a BG from FirstRand Bank, Manila, Philippines…there exists no branch of FirstRand in the Philippines,” the source further shared, adding that Biswal Tradelink was also a “mere paper entity” as its registered office was a residential property belonging to a relative of Biswal.
It has been reported by the ED official that the fake BG racket used by Ashok Pal also used lookalike bank domains such as Indianbank.in, Indusindbank.in, pnbIndia.in, psdbank.co.in, siliguripnb.co.in, Iobbank.co.in and unionbankofindia.co.in.
“Each of these employed single character swaps (notably ‘I’ in place of ‘i’) or other minor textual tweaks intended to visually pass as official. The sole utility of these domains is to impersonate banks in emails/letters, thereby projecting forged instruments as genuine,” the official said.
The Reliance Group had previously stated that Reliance power had been a “victim of fraud, forgery and cheating conspiracy” in this case and that it had made due disclosures in this context to the stock exchange on November 7, 2024.
RPL is a listed company in which public holds more than 75 per cent shares.
A group spokesperson said a criminal complaint was lodged by them against third party (accused company) with Delhi Police’s EOW in October, 2024, and the “due process” of law would follow.
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