Gitanjali Gems to undergo forensic auditing

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Mar 28, 2018

Mehul Choksi, a jewellery tycoon who is accused alongside his nephew Nirav Modi of fraud at the Punjab National Bank (PNB), will have his business Gitanjali Gems forensically audited by BDO India.

A group of 31 lenders has requested a forensic audit of Gitanjali Gems in order to determine how the business transferred the money that investigators such as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) believe was fraudulently obtained from the PNB and other banks. The committee, which is led by ICICI Bank, has mandated BDO India to carry out the forensic audit. BDO India is part of the BDO professional services firm that is headquartered in Belgium.

The New Delhi based firm TR Chadha & Co has also been named by the group of lenders as a forensic auditor for Gitanjali Gems. The 31 lenders have recorded an exposure to the Gitanjali Gems fraud totalling 6,000 crore rupees (approximately 902 million US dollars). The total sum reported by the PNB, which also covers fraud from the Nirav Modi Group, totals 12,300 crore rupees (approximately 1.9 billion US dollars).

BDO will investigate the Gitanjali group’s business operations over a period of seven years dating back to 2010. The hope is to discover whether Choksi has other assets that the banks do not yet know about as well as how Choksi moved money around. BDO India is also investigating five of Nirav Modi’s companies in the same way.