New Delhi, 1 Aug

The Enforcement Directorate on Friday conducted searches against an Odisha-based company that allegedly ran a "fake" bank guarantee issuance racket for business groups, including providing an alleged Rs 68 crore such assurance for a Reliance Group company, official sources said.

The money laundering case is against a Bhubaneswar located company named Biswal Tradelink and its directors.

The ED case, filed under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), stems from a November, 2024 FIR of the Delhi Police Economic Offences Wing (EOW).

The ED, the sources said, conducted searches at three premises of the company on Friday at Bhubaneswar and one "associate" entity in Kolkata.

Agency sources alleged that the company was engaged in the activity of issuance of "fake" bank guarantees against a commission of 8 per cent.

They said a bank guarantee of Rs 68.2 crore submitted to the Solar Energy Corporation of India Limited (SECI) on behalf of Reliance NU BESS Limited, a subsidiary of Reliance Power, was found to be "fake".

The company was formerly known as Maharashtra Energy Generation Limited.

The ED seized some documents related to this transaction during the last week searches against the Anil Ambani led Reliance Group companies in Mumbai, they said.

A Reliance Group spokesperson said Reliance Power has been a "victim of fraud, forgery and cheating conspiracy" in this case and it has made due disclosures in this context to the stock exchanges on 7 November, 2024.

The spokesperson said a criminal complaint was lodged by them against the third party (accused company) with the Delhi Police EOW in October, 2024 and the "due process" of law will follow.

The sources said similar suspicious financial transactions with multiple companies have been traced and this was being investigated.

It was found that the Odisha-based company was using an email domain--s-bi.co.in-- instead of the original sbi.co.in to create a "facade" of genuineness that the communication is being sent by the State Bank of India (SBI), the country's largest lender.

The fake domain was used to send "forged" communication to SECI, impersonating the SBI, the sources said.

It is understood that the ED has written to the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) seeking domain registration details of the fake email domain.

The ED's preliminary investigation, as per the sources, has indicated that the Odisha company has also facilitated "fake" bills for commission and uses multiple "undisclosed" bank accounts.

Suspicious transactions worth crores of rupees has been done through these bank accounts, they said.

The Odisha company is a "mere paper entity" as its registered office is a residential property belonging to a relative and no company records were found at the address during the searches, the sources said.

The agency sources claimed that key individuals of the company were using the Telegram app in a 'disappearing messages' enabled mode in order to "conceal" their communications.