Anil Ambani's Aide Ashok Kumar Pal Arrested In Money Laundering Case

Reliance Group Chairman Anil Ambani's aide and senior Reliance Power Limited officer, Ashok Kumar Pal, was arrested on Saturday in connection with money laundering charges linked to a fake bank guarantee case. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) took Pal into custody under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

According to officials, Pal, who has been working as a Chief Financial Officer at Reliance Power for more than seven years, submitted a bogus bank guarantee of over Rs 68 crore to the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) - a public sector company under the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. To pass the fake bank guarantee as genuine, Pal used fake and spoofed domains of commercial banks such as 'sbi.17313@s-bi.co.in', 'Indiabank.in', 'Indusindbank.in', 'pnbIndia.in', 'psdbank.co.in', 'siliguripnb.co.in', 'lobbank.co.in', and 'unionbankofIndia.co.in' - each using single-character swamps or minor textual tweaks.

Pal used to approve releases and facilitate paperwork via Telegram or WhatsApp, the probe agency said.

Investigation also revealed that Reliance Power had submitted a bank guarantee from FirstRand Bank in Manila, Philippines. However, such a branch in the Philippines does not exist.

A key player in the alleged fraud is Biswal Tradelink - an Odisha-based small entity operating from a residential address with no credible bank guarantee track record and without vendor diligence. Investigation revealed that the company only existed on paper, and no statutory company records were found at the registered address. The director of Biswas Sarathi was arrested in August for submitting fake guarantees worth Rs 68.2 crore, sources said. These guarantees, they said, were arranged on behalf of Reliance Power.

Anil Ambani and the multi-crore fraud

Anil Ambani is also allegedly a part of a money laundering case pertaining to alleged financial irregularities and a collective loan "diversion" pegged at more than Rs 17,000 crore by his multiple group companies, including Reliance Infrastructure (R Infra). The first allegation concerns the "illegal" loan diversion of around Rs 3,000 crore, given by Yes Bank to Anil Ambani's group companies between 2017 and 2019.

The second allegation includes a similar fraud - but much larger - of over Rs 14,000 crore, allegedly committed by Reliance Communications.

The investigation also flagged instances of loans being issued to companies with poor or unverified financial sources, the use of common directors and addresses, a lack of essential documentation, the routing of funds to shell entities, and instances of 'loan evergreening'. According to sources, the initial inquiry shows that some loans were approved and released on the same day the application was made, while others were transferred even before 'approval'.

Following this, the probe agency launched raids in July this year as part of the alleged bank loan fraud-linked money laundering case, apart from multiple other allegations of financial irregularities with crores of rupees by certain companies.

In the past few days, the probe agency has summoned Anil Ambani for questioning and sought details from 12 to 13 banks about the due diligence procedures conducted when loans were granted to Reliance Housing Finance, Reliance Communications, and Reliance Commercial Finance.