After recovering wads of currency notes worth `50 crore stashed away in two swanky apartments belonging to Arpita Mukherjee, the close aide of just-sacked Bengal minister Partha Chatterjee, the Enforcement Directorate investigating the money trail behind the school level recruitment scam has stumbled upon three bank accounts of Mukherjee loaded with crores.
The ED has found `2.20 crore in three accounts, sources said adding all the three accounts have been frozen.
Besides, the ED is also looking for four swanky cars belonging to Mukherjee a part time model-cum-actress. The four cars, ‘an Audie, a Mercedes Benz, and two Honda class cars have gone missing after the raid in the Diamond City apartment’ of Mukherjee, sources quoting the ED said adding the officials fear the cars had been used to transfer money from the first apartment that yielded `22 crore in cash andanother `2 crore worth foreign currency and jewellery.
The officials who were checking the CCTV camera footage are of the opinion that the missing cars could lead to some more people involved in the scam. Three plush bungalows belonging to Mukherjee and Chatterjee at Bolpur — a weekend tourist spot —behind Rabindranath Tagore’s Shantiniketan Vihwa Bharati university are also under the ED scanner sources said.
About `50 crore in cash and jewellery worth more than `5 crore besides bank instrument and property deeds worth crores have been recovered from two of Mukherjee’s apartments in the past one week.
The officials have also come across documents showing Arpita’s repeated travels to some South-east Asian countries including Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Bangladesh. The officials are of the view that these tours could be related to some kind of hawala transactions.
Meanwhile, a day after he was sacked from the Cabinet and stripped of all the party posts Partha Chatterjee — now in ED custody — on Friday made a loaded statement before the media about the decisions taken by the Trinamool Congress regarding his suspension from the party.
When asked to comment on how he felt about the present situation when he had been removed from the ministry and stripped of all the party posts he said all the “decisions taken by Mamata Banerjee is correct.”
Subsequently when he was asked as to whether the party had taken the correct decision by removing him he said “only time will tell,” and added he was a victim of conspiracy.
The removal of Chatterjee, a founder member of the TMC is being seen in terms a vertical division in the Trinamool Congress — between the senior leaders showing allegiance to the Chief Minister and the newer generation loyal to her nephew Abhishek Banerjee.
“Partha Chatterjee’s remarks says that the TMC is divided between two groups of thieves — the newer generation and the older generation,”said a senior Pradesh Congress leader.