Shares of Anil Ambani's Reliance Power and Reliance Infrastructure saw a significant uptick today, reversing two consecutive days of decline. Reliance Power's stock surged by 0.60 INR (1.33%), reaching 45.70 INR, compared to 45.10 INR yesterday. Meanwhile, Reliance Infra's shares gained 5.80 INR (2.57%), climbing to 231.20 INR from 225.40 INR on the previous trading day. This recovery comes after Anil Ambani's aide and senior Reliance Power Limited officer, Ashok Kumar Pal, was arrested on Saturday in connection with money laundering charges linked to a fake bank guarantee case. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) took Pal into custody under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
According to officials, Pal, who has been working as a Chief Financial Officer at Reliance Power for more than seven years, submitted a bogus bank guarantee of over Rs 68 crore to the Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) - a public sector company under the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. To pass the fake bank guarantee as genuine, Pal used fake and spoofed domains of commercial banks such as 'sbi.17313@s-bi.co.in', 'Indiabank.in', 'Indusindbank.in', 'pnbIndia.in', 'psdbank.co.in', 'siliguripnb.co.in', 'lobbank.co.in', and 'unionbankofIndia.co.in' - each using single-character swamps or minor textual tweaks. Pal used to approve releases and facilitate paperwork via Telegram or WhatsApp, the probe agency said. Investigation also revealed that Reliance Power had submitted a bank guarantee from FirstRand Bank in Manila, Philippines. However, such a branch in the Philippines does not exist.
On the other hand as on Reliance Infra Enforcement Directorate (ED) has identified assets worth Rs 2,000 crore which are under ED lens. As per a NDTV profit report, the process of attaching these assets is expected to begin in two weeks. The probe from ED is focused on alleged fund diversion of Rs 17,000 crore across multiple ADAG companies. The stock has been on a downward trend, underperforming its sector by 4.15% and recording a consecutive fall over the last two days, with a total decline of 6.76% in that period. Notably, Reliance Infrastructure is trading below its 5-day, 20-day, 50-day, 100-day, and 200-day moving averages, indicating a challenging market position.