The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has provisionally attached 75 immovable properties including 67 windmills valued at Rs 113.32 crore belonging to the Chennai-based Surana Group of Companies on money laundering charges in connection with three cases of bank fraud involving Rs 3,986 crore of principal outstanding amount to the public sector banks.
The ED initiated money laundering investigation on the basis of three FIRs filed by CBI against Surana Industries Limited and others, Surana Power Limited and others besides Surana Corporation Limited and others.
Investigation has revealed that these three companies of Surana Group have defrauded the banks by floating a web of shell companies wherein they appointed its employees/ relatives as directors/proprietors/partners and indulged in paper transactions with them without actual movement of goods.
The credit capital of the banks were round tripped/ layered to personal accounts of promoters of company by projecting bank funds as unsecured loans from their associate shell companies and same funds were then subsequently infused in main Group Companies as part of Promoters contribution to enhance the DP limits. The probe also revealed that Surana Group has companies in Cayman Island as well as British Virgin Islands in the name of dummy directors and siphoned off money to park in those companies. For the said purpose, they established four companies in Singapore and exported goods to them and the money receivable from them were written off in the book of accounts in India. Further, some of the diverted funds were used to purchase movable/ immovable properties in the names of various benami persons/ companies.
These actions of the Promoters/ officials of the Surana Group led to the accounts becoming irregular which ultimately led to accounts turning into NPA and leading to an amount of Rs 3986 crore as outstanding to the banks.
Based on the investigation, Dinesh Chand Surana, MD of Surana Industries Limited & Surana Power Ltd, Vijay Raj Surana, MD of Surana Corporation Limited and two dummy directors of shell companies—P Anand and I Prabhakaran, were arrested on July12 and the Principal Session Judge at Chennai remanded them to judicial custody. As many as 67 windmills with land worth Rs 51.69 crore and various immovable properties valued at Rs 61.63 crore of Ramlal Jain, who amalgamated the ‘Proceeds of Crime’ into his regular business, total assets valued at Rs 113.32 crore were provisionally attached under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
Meanwhile, the ED has provisionally attached immovable assets to tune of Rs. 3.35 crore in case of CG Gowramma, former - Corporator (Azad Nagar), Bangalore in A Disproportionate Asset case.
The ED initiated money laundering investigation on basis of chargesheet filed by Karnataka Lokayukta Police, Bengaluru against Gowramma, and her husband C Govindraju in a corruption case.