Why was Anil Ambani's aide, Reliance CFO Ashok Kumar Pal, arrested by ED?
The Enforcement Directorate has arrested Anil Ambani’s aide, Ashok Kumar Pal, the Chief Financial Officer of Reliance Power Ltd, over alleged money laundering charges linked to a fake bank guarantee and fake invoicing case worth ₹17,000 crore.
Officials confirmed that he was arrested on Friday night at the agency’s Delhi office after hours of questioning under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.
On Saturday morning, he was produced before the judge.
Sources said that Pal played a “crucial” role in the diversion of company funds and the submission of forged financial documents in Reliance, a company in which the public holds more than 75 per cent of the company funds.
According to the Reliance company website, Pal has been a chartered accountant and has over 25 years of experience. He has worked at the company for more than seven years.
The ED’s investigation pertains to a fraudulent Bank Guarantee of over ₹68 crore submitted to the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) for a Battery Energy Storage BESS tender. In August, the ED made its first arrest in relation to the case-Partha Sarathi Biswal, who is the managing director of Biswal Tradelink Pvt Ltd, and an Odisha-based company, for arranging the fake guarantees.
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The ED discovered that Biswal Tradelink existed only on paper, and there were no statutory company records at the registered address.
Further investigations revealed that the guarantee was issued in the name of "FirstRand Bank, Manila, Philippines -- a location where the bank has no operational branch." "The guarantee was arranged through Biswal Tradelink Pvt. Ltd (BTPL), a small entity operating from a residential address with no credible record in providing such guarantees. BTPL director Partha Sarathi Biswal, already in judicial custody, is alleged to have assisted in executing the forged document," an official said while speaking to ANI.
Officials say that Pal finalised, approved, and executed the documents on behalf of RPL fr the SECI bid. They also said that he cleared payments and managed paperwork through Telegram and WhatsApp, which bypassed the Reliance Power’s Official SAP and vendor master systems.
The ED also said that Pal had used fake domains that impersonated the State Bank of India SBI to pass the fake bank guarantees as real. Email domains like “s-bi.co.in” were used instead of the real “sbi.co.in”.
Other banks like the Indian Bank, IndusInd Bank, and the Punjab National Bank were also impersonated.
The probe follows a money laundering case registered based on an FIR report filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation.
As part of the investigations, Anil Ambani was also summoned for questioning, and the probe agency also sought details from about 12 to 13 banks about the procedures in which loans were granted to Reliance Housing Finance, Reliance Communication, and Reliance Commercial Finance.
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