The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has attached assets worth Rs 3.94 crore in a money laundering case registered against a bureaucrat couple arrested on DA charges in Odisha.
The properties have been attached under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002 in connection with a case registered against OFS officer Nalini Prusty and her husband OAS officer Bijaya Ketan Sahoo and others for assets disproportionate to their known sources of income, the ED stated in a release on Tuesday.
The ED had initiated a money laundering investigation on the basis of FIR dated August 30, 2018, registered at the Vigilance police station, Cuttack, against Prusty, Sahoo and others for possession of disproportionate assets worth Rs 5.05 crore.
The investigation revealed that Prusty and Sahoo had reportedly invested their unaccounted money in acquiring various properties and bank investments in their name and in the name of the OFS officer’s mother Debaki Prusty.
In 2018, Odisha Vigilance arrested Nalini Prusty and her husband.
During raids at several places, Vigilance officials had unearthed assets worth whopping Rs 6.87 crore allegedly possessed by the then Financial Adviser-cum-Chief Accounts Officer of Odisha Primary Education Programme Authority (OPEPA) Nalini Prusty and Bijaya Ketan Sahoo, who was the Chhatrapur Tehsildar.
The properties include two flats at Utkal Villa in Bhubaneswar worth Rs 1.8 crore, furniture and interior articles valued at Rs 1.34 crore, another property at Grand Asiana in Puri town estimated at Rs 21.4 lakh, a triple-storied building in Bhubaneswar valued at Rs 49.6 lakh, six plots in Bhubaneswar and Jatni worth about Rs 58 lakh, Rs 1.24-crore fixed deposits in four banks, Rs 22-lakh deposits in savings bank accounts, household articles of Rs 46 lakh and gold, diamond jewellery estimated at Rs 40 lakh.
A month after their arrest, Debaki Prusty committed suicide by jumping off the terrace of an apartment at Jayadev Vihar in Bhubaneswar. A suicide note was recovered from the flat in which Debaki had reportedly urged her husband to take care of their grandson who is staying abroad. She had mentioned about the financial