New Delhi, May 24 (UNI) Enforcement Directorate (ED) has filed Prosecution Complaint under section 45 of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) against Nirav Modi, Ms Purvi Modi, Maiank Mehta, Neeshal Modi, Nehal Modi, Deepak Modi and 18 other accused for commission of offences of money laundering, defined under Section 3 and punishable under Section 4 of the PMLA, an official release stated here on Thursday.
The other accused include the three firms of Nirav Modi - Solar Exports, Stellar Diamonds and Diamonds RUs - which had fraudulently obtained Rs 6498 crore through Letters of Undertaking (LOU) issued by Punjab National Bank, Mumbai.
The funds so obtained by said three entities were partly utilised for payment to various overseas companies and also for offsetting earlier LOUs.
It was revealed during investigation that the payments were made to 17 overseas entities in Hong Kong, Dubai and USA since 2011 in the guise of export and import.

During further investigation, it was found that all these overseas companies were dummy companies of Nirav Modi and the directors or shareholders on these companies were dummy directors and were employees or ex- employees of Firestar group of companies who were working as per the directions of Nirav Modi and his other trusted officials Shyamsunder Wadhwa, Aditya Nanavati, Mihir Bhansali, Saju Poulose.
“Statements of various dummy directors and associated persons disclosed that these persons were just mechanically transferring the goods and money as per the directions of Nirav Modi without any economic rationale and logic. Documents, obtained from overseas jurisdictions, proved the diversion and layering of the proceeds of crime”, ED stated.
The modus operandi was fraudulent import export wherein there were no manufacturing activities in any of the dummy overseas companies.
“The invoices of export or import were overvalued to huge extent, so as to inflate the balance sheets and procure high credit facilities from the banks”, an ED official said.

The export or import was also not genuine and was just rotational transactions. The jewelry exported from India was dismantled and diamonds, pearls taken out of it and gold, silver were sent for melting. The melted metal was re-exported to Dubai or India and diamonds pearls were also separately re-exported to India.
Based on the investigation finding, key information regarding overseas investments of Nirav Modi was obtained. With the help of this information, 15 Letter Rogatory (LR) to various countries seeking legal assistance were also issued.
“So far, the diversion of the proceeds of crime to the extent of US Dollar 629.21 million has been traced to several group companies, relatives, other dummy companies under the control of Nirav Modi”, the probe agency said.
UNI AKS SHK 2144