Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal's judicial custody extended by 14 days

A Special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court in Mumbai on Wednesday extended Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal's judicial custody by 14 days. Goyal's Enforcement Directorate (ED) custody was supposed to end today. Earlier this week, the Special PMLA court extended Goyal's ED custody till September 14. Goyal was produced before the court after his initial remand was over on Monday.  
 
The ED had sought his custody for another four days for further probe in the case. ED told the court that maximum money siphoned off is in foreign accounts. The central agency further claimed that there is a person in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to look after this.  

This month, the 74-year-old Jet Airways founder was arrested by the ED under PMLA after a long session of questioning at Goyal's Mumbai office. The money laundering case against the Jet Airways founder is based on a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) FIR against Jet Airways, Goyal’s wife Anita and former executives of the now-grounded private airline in connection an alleged Rs 538 crore fraud case at Canara Bank.   

The FIR was registered on the PSU bank’s complaint which alleged that it sanctioned credit limits and loans to Jet Airways (India) Ltd to the tune of Rs 848.86 crore of which Rs 538.62 crore was outstanding. The allegations in the FIR suggest that the company was initially granted a working capital limit of Rs 126 crore and an inland letter of credit/financial bank guarantee limit of Rs 100 crore for various purposes.  
 
The company further received Rs 400 crore as a term loan for operations-related expenses along with Rs 200 crore for aircraft reconfiguration, the introduction of new routes, business promotion and related activities. Furthermore, the company received a short-term loan of Rs 17.52 crore. The bank further alleges that the now-grounded airline borrowed funds to subsidiary/group entities via various means.

During the review period, Rs 1.152.62 crore was paid for professional and consultancy services with alleged suspicious transactions worth Rs 197.57 crore detected in the case of linked entities. Moreover, over Rs 420 crore was paid to the entities whose business nature differed from the service description given on their invoices raised to the company, as per the allegations. Jet Airways share is up 5 per cent at 53.66 apiece on the BSE at the time of writing this story. 

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