A court-appointed investigator said he has found evidence that Samuels Jewelers, a century-old U.S. retail chain that filed for bankruptcy last year, laundered money as part of an alleged $2 billion fraud on India’s Punjab National Bank, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The investigator, John Carney, was appointed by a judge last year to look into the U.S. end of an alleged international fraud that ran for years across the U.S., India, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates. His probe of Samuels homed in on a complex in Austin, Texas, where a collection of businesses controlled by Mehul Choksi shuffled tens of millions of dollars in cash and diamonds around, creating the illusion of deals with outside companies, the report said. Choksi, chairman of the company that owns Samuels, is wanted by Indian authorities and contact information for him isn’t available.
