PNB fraud: ED raids five jewellery stores in Odisha’s twin cities

Bhubaneswar: Enforcement Directorate (ED) today conducted raids on five major jewellery stores in twin cities of Bhubaneswar and Cuttack in connection with multi-crore PNB fraud case, touted as the biggest banking scam in the country.

A team of ED officials raided five Odisha-based prominent jewellery retail stores simultaneously days after the famed diamond merchant Nirav Modi fled the country defrauding the Punjab National Bank (PNB) of over Rs 11,000 crore.

The raids were in progress till the filing of this report.

Notably, the anti-corruption wing sleuths on Sunday had continued their searches at over 45 more locations in 15 cities across India in connection with the scam.

The agency raided several places in Bengaluru, Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Patna, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Guwahati.

Besides, it also conducted raids in Goa, Jaipur, Srinagar and Jalandhar cities.

On Friday and Saturday, ED had also conducted raids at 35 and 21 locations across India respectively in connection with the multi-crore scam and had seized diamonds, gold and jewellery worth Rs 5,674 crore, reports said.

While the CBI has named several top executives of top diamond houses in the FIR, many bankers have also been arrested in this connection.