By: KeerthiMohan
Indian industrialist Pramod Mittal, the younger brother of steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, is to remain in custody in Bosnia for at least a month following his arrest for suspected fraud, a prosecutor said Friday.
A judge in the court of Tuzla in the northeast of the country “has ordered that the three people under investigation remain in custody for a month,” prosecutor Cazim Serhatlic told AFP.
The probe is into the suspicious transfer of some 21 million Bosnian marks (nearly 11 million euros, $12 million) from the bank account of a coking plant between 2006 and 2015, prosecutors had said on Wednesday.
Pramod Mittal, the 62-year-old head of the supervisory board of GIKIL which operates a coking plant in the northeastern town of Lukavac, was arrested on Tuesday.
Two other company officials — general manager Paramesh Bhattacharyya and another member of the supervisory board — were also arrested.
The detention request was made in view of the “flight risk, repetition of criminal acts and breach of public order,” said prosecutor Serhatlic.
GIKIL was founded in 2003 and is co-managed by Pramod Mittal’s Global Steel Holdings and a local public company (KHK).
In operation since the 1950s, the coking plant employs around 1,000 people.
Serhatlic has said that if found guilty the suspects could be jailed for up to 45 years.
Lakshmi Mital, the CEO of global steel giant ArcelorMittal, has bailed out his cash-strapped brother Pramod in India.
Pramod Mittal owns several companies in the Balkans.
(AFP)
