Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath gave clarification that he had no connection with Puri’s business. Naths nephew Ratul Puri arrested for money laundering and bank fraud .
“I have no connection with the business they are doing. But it appears to be purely a mala fide action. I believe and have full faith that the court will take a corrective stand in this case,” Nath said on Tuesday.
Puri, former executive director of digital data storage company Moser Baer, is being investigated by three main central probe agencies — the Enforcement Directorate (ED), the CBI and the Income Tax department.
The ED officials said Puri was placed under arrest under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) late Monday night.
In a statement released on Tuesday, Moser Baer called Puri’s arrest unfortunate. “The arrest by Enforcement Directorate is unfortunate. Moser Baer had operated in accordance with all legal compliances and this case now, when Moser Baer is in National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), is motivated,” it said.
Besides Ratul and the company, his father and Managing Director Deepak Puri, Directors Nita Puri (Ratul’s mother and Kamal Nath’s sister), Sanjay Jain and Vineet Sharma were also been booked by the agency for alleged criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery and corruption.
Ratul had resigned from the post of executive director in 2012, while his parents continue to be on the board, the bank said in a statement.
The company is involved in the manufacture of optical storage media like compact discs, DVDs, solid state storage devices. It was taking loans from various banks since 2009 and went for debt restructuring a number of times, the bank has alleged in the complaint which is now part of the CBI FIR.
When it was unable to pay the debt, a forensic audit was done and the account was declared as “fraud” by the Central Bank of India on April 20, 2019, it has alleged.
