Sunken into India’s biggest-ever Bank scam worth $1.77 billion, the Punjab National Bank (PNB) now has a hope that can help in recovering it from the fraud soon – the widening police probe which has searched down dozens of locations linked to the Nirav Modi, the diamond billionaire who is at the centre of the investigation.

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Investors may have been shocked when one of the India’s biggest bank Punjab National Bank disclosed about the biggest-ever in the country’s history worth $1.77 billion by billionaire jeweller Nirav Modi, but PNB believes it can recover soon. The state-lender bank promised its investors on Friday that it was putting in place “better checks and balances” as police investigations for the mega-fraud has widened significantly. So far, the in-charge financial crime agency, the Enforcement Directorate has managed to hunt down dozens of locations that are linked or associated to Nirav Modi.

However, the biggest development would be raids carried out in 48 hours, during which, the CBI and ED has seized diamonds, gold and jewellery worth 56.49 billion rupees ($880 million) as part of the fraud recovery. The CBI has carried out multiple raids on the offices of jewellery retailer Gitanjali and also, the Gitanjali group of firms led by Modi’s uncle Mehul Choksi. The outlets of the Gitanjali group stretches from India to New York to London to Beijing and will be investigated instantly. Also, the Reserve Bank of India too has rolled out an official statement declaring that “it has already undertaken a supervisory assessment of control systems in PNB and will take appropriate supervisory action”.

As per NDTV reports, PNB Chief Executive Sunil Mehta said, “The amount is big. But we will have the capacities to bring it back to normalcy, maybe within six months” – reassuring them to get back on track soon. Apart from that, Indian Foreign Ministry has suspended the passports of Modi and Choksi for four weeks, and had given them one week to voice objections to its plan to revoke the documents. And the investigation teams are digging deeper into the Nirav Modi networks for resolution of the mega-fraud.

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