The public is still reeling from the effects of one of the biggest frauds the country has seen. But the government and all parties involved are busy playing pass the parcel with the blame for it. Nirav Modi’s lawyers are claiming innocence, the CAG says they preempted the scam and Congress and BJP are playing catch and catch with corruption charges.
According to the senior auditors, in the 2016 government audit of the jewellery sector they found serious issues with the supervision and coordination of various government bodies. This included the RBI, the departments of Commerce and Customs. The CAG, in fact, said that it wasn’t surprised by the PNB scam. The audit in 2016 says that there were systemic issues worth rupees 19,522.67 crores. There were also internal control matters that ‘couldn’t be quantified’. Problems were found with Nirav Modi’s companies like Firestar International. Purchases were also misreported.
The Income Tax department too said that they had suspected discrepancies and irregularities by Nirav Modi’s group of companies. According to a previous report, the company accepted amounts of cash for the sale of jewellery and diamonds that were over and above the sale consideration. The creditworthiness of certain companies and sources of funds was also suspect.
The PNB scam has thrown up much conspiracy and material for the media to take note of. Another question the CBI has been trying to investigate is why the scam took so long to come out into the open while interrogating the PNB officials. Along with this a certain Hari Prasad it was reported said that when he approached the Times Group with the information they refused to report it.
What is it about this scam that keeps growing like fungus? Nirav Modi’s lawyers in the meantime are trying desperately to save him from the brutality of the law, saying that he is being framed by the PNB Group. Arun Jaitley blamed the auditors and management of PNB. But BJP is not escaping the heat either, the party is now being doubted on its stand against corruption. BJP, of course, is citing Congress as the source of all woes. Is this the tip of the iceberg? What else is this fraud going to bring to the public?