New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has made its third arrest in the money laundering probe linked to Reliance Power, a company from businessman Anil Ambani’s group, in connection with the alleged issuance of a fake bank guarantee worth ₹68 crore, official sources said on Friday.
Officials said that Amar Nath Dutta was taken into custody on Thursday under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). A special court has remanded him to four days of ED custody.
Earlier, the agency had arrested former Reliance Power Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Ashok Kumar Pal and Partha Sarathi Biswal, Managing Director of Odisha-based Biswal Tradelink, in connection with the same case.
The investigation pertains to a ₹68.2 crore bank guarantee submitted to the Solar Energy Corporation of India Limited (SECI) on behalf of Reliance NU BESS Limited, a subsidiary of Reliance Power. The guarantee was later found to be “fake”. The company was previously known as Maharashtra Energy Generation Limited.
According to the ED, Biswal Tradelink allegedly operated a racket that provided “fake” bank guarantees to various business entities in exchange for an 8% commission.
The money laundering case originated from a November 2024 FIR filed by Delhi Police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW), which accused Biswal Tradelink of issuing fake guarantees.
Investigators found that Reliance NU BESS Ltd. had submitted a guarantee purportedly issued by FirstRand Bank in Manila, Philippines — a bank that, according to the ED, does not have a branch in that country.
Reliance Power has maintained that it is a “victim of fraud, forgery, and cheating conspiracy” in the case. The company said it had informed the stock exchange about the issue on November 7, 2024, and had lodged a criminal complaint against the third party involved with the Delhi Police’s EOW in October 2024.
A Reliance Group spokesperson clarified that Anil Ambani has not been on the board of Reliance Power for over three and a half years and is “not connected with the matter in any manner.”
The ED also revealed that Biswal Tradelink used an email domain — s-bi.co.in — designed to resemble sbi.co.in, the domain of the State Bank of India (SBI), to create an illusion of authenticity in its communications. The fake domain was allegedly used to send forged emails to SECI.
The agency further described Biswal Tradelink as a “paper entity,” noting that its registered office was actually a residential property belonging to a relative of Biswal.
