Sleuths of the Enforcement Directorate conducted simultaneous raids on the houses of four former officials of labour and Construction Co-operative Federation (lACCFED), who were involved in multi-crore rupees scam, on Friday. All the four accused were also arrested in the said scam and were reportedly out on bail.
Sources confirmed that the ED sleuths recovered large scale indiscriminate documents of high value properties which is said to be made through money laundering. The team would now verify the papers and if they established that the properties were purchased through money laundering than necessary criminal proceedings will be made against the accused.
According to ED sources, the raids were conducted at terminated lACCFED Managing Director, Brahm Prakash’s house at Vailshali Enclave in Indiranagar, terminated chief engineer of lACCFED, Govind Saran Srivastava at his resident in Vivek Khand at Gomati Nagar along with the resident of terminated general manager-cum MD of lACCFED, Pankaj Tripathi and accountant Anil Agarwal, at their residences in Aliganj. The raids were reportedly conducted after the ED found some evidences that the said accused had laundered the scam money to dodge the investigating team which earlier made probe into the lACCFED scam. ED officials who were involved in Friday’s raid refused to reveal the details.
It may be mentioned that about 18 ministers of the BSP government are under the scanner of the special investigation bureau (SIB) of the state police’s cooperative cell which probed the multi crore lACCFED scam. Three of the ministers besides over a dozen officials were arrested in the scam so far. Initially, the SIB was told to probe into Rs. 12.36 crore bungling. “As the probe progresses, it turned out to be a scam running into several hundred crores,” an officer said and added the role of the bank officials was also under scanner. How the bank officers cleared the cheques of Rs 20 lakh to Rs 50 lakh in violation of the RBI guideline. Even the enforcement directorate was not informed about the clearance of hefty amount through bearer cheques by the bank, the SIB officer said. During investigation, officers and engineers of lACCFED had told sleuths that they pay 10 percent of the released money to the minister concerned as his `share’.
In its exercise to find out the trail of the ill-gotten money, state cooperative cell has sought assistance from the income tax department and enforcement directorate. This is being done to find out where the accused had invested the money. Earlier the general manger of lACCFED, PN Singh Yadav, had lodged an FIR in the case alleging that Rs 12.36 crore was fraudulently taken from the account of lACCFED. The state government later handed over the probe to the state cooperative cell.