The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has provisionally attached eight immovable properties, three vehicles and several bank accounts/shares/mutual funds worth Rs 8.79 crore belonging to Bollywood actors Dino Morea and Sanjay Khan, and Aqeel Abdulkhalil Bachooali, also known as DJ Aqeel, besides late Congress leader Ahmed Patel’s son-in-law Irfan Ahmed Siddiqui, under money laundering charges in a case relating to Vadodara-based pharmaceutical conglomerate Sandesara Group, also referred to as Sterling Biotech.
These attached assets belong to film actors Sanjay Khan (Rs 3 crore) and Dino Morea (Rs 1.40 crore), Aqeel Abdulkhalil Bachooali (Rs 1.98 crore) and Irfan Ahmed Siddiqui (Rs 2.41 crore), the ED said.
Four separate provisional attachment orders under relevant sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act were issued for the attachment of the assets, the agency said.
The ED had initiated an investigation under the PMLA on the basis of an FIR registered by the CBI for cheating several public sector banks to the tune of Rs 14,500 crore.
Investigation by the ED revealed that Sandesaras have diverted “proceeds of crime” of Rs 3 crore, Rs 1.4 crore, Rs 12.54 crore, and Rs 3.51 crore to Sanjay Khan, Dino Morea, Aqeel Bachooali, and Irfan Ahmed Siddiqui respectively, it said.
Earlier, the ED had attached movable/immovable properties to the tune of Rs 14,513 crore through eight provisional attachment orders in relation to this case. With this attachment, the total attachment in this case reached Rs 14,521.80 crore. Total proceeds of crime in this case is more than Rs 16,000 crore, it further said.
Till now, one prosecution complaint (chargesheet) along with four supplementary complaints have been filed in this case and four arrests have been made by the ED.
Sterling Biotech promoters Nitin Sandesara, Chetan Sandesara, Dipti Chetan Sandesara and Hitesh Patel have been declared fugitives by the Special Court, it said.
Meanwhile, the agency, in a separate case, arrested Gopal Amarlal Thakur, Director of Monarch Universal Group, in a money laundering case involving over Rs 50 crore.
The had initiated an investigation against this group on the basis of FIRs and chargesheets filed by Maharashtra Police under the provisions of IPC for cheating and defrauding genuine flat buyers by collecting money from them and not registering the same in their names after sufficient time lapse.