The Enforcement Directorate has made the third arrest in connection with a money-laundering probe involving Reliance Power, an Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group company, which has been linked to an alleged fake bank guarantee of ₹68 crore.
Amar Nath Dutta, a resident of Calcutta, was arrested late on Thursday under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) on charges of playing an active role in providing fake bank guarantees, sources said.
A special court sent him to ED custody till November 10.
Earlier, the central agency had arrested former Reliance Power chief financial officer Ashok Kumar Pal and Partha Sarathi Biswal, managing director of an Odisha-based company named Biswal Tradelink, in connection with the case.
“He (Dutta) claims to provide consultancy services in trade financing. Dutta played an active role along with Ashok Pal and Partha Sarathi Biswal, for providing fake bank guarantees,” said an ED official.
The case pertains to a bank guarantee of ₹68.2 crore submitted to Solar Energy Corporation of India Limited (SECI) on behalf of Reliance NU BESS Limited, a subsidiary of Reliance Power, which was found to be “fake”.
The company was formerly known as Maharashtra Energy Generation Limited.
“SECI suffered a loss of over ₹100 crore due to fraudulent bank guarantee submission by the Reliance Power subsidiary (Reliance NU BESS),” the official said.
The agency has alleged Biswal Tradelink ran a racket of providing “fake” bank guarantees for business groups.
The Reliance Group had earlier said Anil Ambani was “not on the board of Reliance Power Limited for more than 3.5 years and is not concerned with this matter in any manner”.
The money-laundering case stems from a November 2024 FIR of Delhi police’s economic offences wing, which alleged that Biswal Tradelink was engaged in issuing “fake” bank guarantees against a commission of 8 per cent.
The probe found that Reliance NU BESS submitted a bank guarantee from FirstRand Bank located in Manila, Philippines, but the bank did not have a branch in that country, according to the ED.
The investigation revealed that Biswal Tradelink was a “mere paper entity” as its registered office was a residential property belonging to a relative of Biswal.
Anil summoned
The ED has again summoned Anil Ambani to record his statement on November 14 in connection with a money-laundering case linked to alleged multiple bank loan frauds worth several crores against his group companies. The agency had questioned him in August.
The ED is probing the money-laundering angle in a case against Reliance Communication regarding an alleged ₹2,929-crore loan fraud, based on an FIR registered by the CBI.