India / CBI case against Mumbai jewellery company for cheating SBI of ₹387 crore

New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed a case against Mumbai based jewellery trading company - Auro Gold Jewellery Pvt Ltd - and its directors Amritlal Jain and Ritesh Jain for allegedly cheating State Bank of India of Rs 387 crore.

The complaint lodged by the SBI and addressed to the Superintendent of Police, the CBI and Anti Corruption Branch gave out a detailed account of the fraud and the parties involved.

Besides Amritlal Jain and Ritesh Jain, three other people were named in the complaint along with the company. The fraud came to light through a forensic audit report dated September 10, 2014, and fraud angle examination report dated May 19, 2018.

The fraud took place in Mumbai between 2011-15 where “the accused person allegedly falsified the accounts, forged and fabricated the documents in order to gain unlawfully at the cost of bank’s funds,” the complaint stated.

Diamond trader and owner of Auro Gold jewellery company, Ritesh Jain, is also the prime accused in the alleged money laundering case worth Rs 1,478 crore through a web of shell companies. In March, he was nabbed by the Mumbai Police at the international airport on upon his return from Dubai. Jain had been absconding since December 2016.

Mumbai’s LT Marg police had registered a cheating and criminal conspiracy case against Jain in September 2017 after a complainant approached them, alleging that his documents had been forged and a fake company formed in his name by Jain. The complainant claimed that several transactions had been made from the account without his knowledge.

Earlier, another case was registered at NM Joshi Marg police station in November 2016 based on allegations that Jain and his father Amritlal Jain deposited Rs 100 crore in shell companies after demonetisation. The case was later transferred to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) which booked Jain under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering (PMLA) Act, 2002 for allegedly opening bank accounts in the name of dummy companies.