The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has attached over a dozen assets, including prime real estate properties in Delhi/NCR and luxury cars, worth Rs12.52 crore in connection with its money laundering probe in the Rs6,000 crore fraudulent foreign exchange transactions case at a Bank of Baroda branch here.
The agency has attached assets of four arrested accused people under the provisions of the Prevention of Money laundering Act after conclusion of preliminary probe. The agency will soon initiate action to take possession of the attached assets, sources said.
“On conclusion of preliminary investigation, some properties of the accused persons — Kamal Kalra, Chandan Bhatia, Sanjay Aggarwal and Gurucharan Singh — have been attached provisionally. The total value of the assets attached is Rs12.52 crore,” an official statement said.
An attachment order under PMlA can be challenged by the accused parties before the designated adjudicating authority and the ED action is aimed at denying the accused persons access to the tainted wealth or derive any benefits from them.
The list of 14 seized properties in the case includes flats and plots in Delhi, Gurgaon and Rajasthan and expensive cars like Mercedes Benz, Hyundai Elantra and Honda City.
The ED had earlier termed this case to be related to trade-based money laundering, where accused traders evaded custom duties and taxes to generate slush funds. This besides, the accused also earned duty drawback facilities illegally.
All the four, who had been arrested in October, were said to be alleged middlemen for at least 15 fake companies, out of the total 59 which were involved in dubious exports and misuse of the regular banking channel for perpetrating the economic crime that was unearthed recently.
The ED had said the four allegedly connived with each other in “forming” fake companies and business entities in Hong Kong by “over valuing” the export value and subsequently claiming duty drawbacks.
The CBI and ED are probing the case under separate laws. Besides the four accused persons whose assets have been attached, the CBI had also arrested BoB AGM SK Garg and Jainish Dubey, who headed the foreign exchange division at its Ashok Vihar branch here, under various provisions of the IPC and the Prevention of Corruption Act.