Probing suspected money laundering in the crisis-riddden National Spot Exchange limited (NSEl), Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday conducted cross-country searches on the premises of Mohan India ltd, a major borrower.
The agency also sealed these properties estimated to be worth Rs 100 crore. A special team of ED sleuths from Mumbai today carried out searches on close to 15 premises in the national capital region, Maharashtra capital, lucknow, Punjab and Chandigarh. The development comes just a day after the company had made a commitment to pay to the exchange about Rs 771 crore in final settlement over the next one year.
In order to probe the businesses and transactions of the bourse, the ED had registered a criminal case under the provisions of the Prevention of Money laundering Act (PMlA) a few days back. The agency, according to sources, took into its possession a number of documents, account ledgers and few costly four-wheelers during the searches which began early today.
The ED suspects the firm laundered huge amounts of sums generated from the operations at NSEl and its investigations suggest these funds were ploughed into real estate and other avenues. A flat in Delhi’s Jor Bagh area, a villa in Gurgaon, a farmhouse in Kapashera and few other locations in the NCR were searched today, sources said.
The ED, according to its probe till now, found no sugar stocks in the name of the firm which were reflected in the original documents.