The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on July 22 attached properties worth Rs 253.62 crore of fugitive diamond merchant Nirav Modi and his companies in Hong Kong as part of the money laundering probe into the estimated $2-billion Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam.

The attached movable properties are located in Hong Kong and have a market value of $30.98 million and HKD 5.75 million, equivalent to Rs 253.62 crore. The properties comprise gems, jewelleries, and bank balances, it said in a press note.

The properties were attached by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.

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Some assets of the Nirav Modi group of companies in Hong Kong were identified in the form of gems and jewelleries lying in private vaults and bank balances in accounts maintained there and these have been provisionally attached under sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), it said.

With this, the total attached and seized assets tally in the case stands at Rs 2,650.07 crore, it added.

Currently, Nirav Modi is lodged in Wandsworth Prison in South West London since his arrest in March 2019 after he lost his extradition plea to India.

Nirav Modi is the subject of two sets of criminal proceedings, with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) case relating to a large-scale PNB scam involving fraudulent letters of undertaking (LoUs) or loan agreements, and the Enforcement Directorate case relating to the laundering of the proceeds of that fraud.

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Modi also faces two additional charges of ‘causing the disappearance of evidence’ and intimidating witnesses or ‘criminal intimidation to cause death,’ which were added to the CBI case.

(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)

First Published:Jul 22, 2022 7:50 PM IST