The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has arrested four persons in connection with a bank fraud case involving ₹3,986 crore. The accused persons are: Dinesh Chand Surana, managing director-cum-promoter of Surana Industries Limited, Surana Power Ltd and promoter of Surana Corporation Ltd; Vijay Raj Surana, managing director-cum-promoter of Surana Corporation Limited, and promoter of Surana Industries Limited and Surana Power Limited; P. Anand and I. Prabhakaran, the dummy directors of shell companies.
All four persons were produced before the Principal Session Judge Court, Chennai, and the court remanded them up to July 27.
ED initiated money laundering investigation on the basis of three FIRs, registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation, BF&SB, Bengaluru, with allegations that the three companies, along with their promoters, managing director/directors and unknown individuals, indulged in the misappropriation and criminal breach of trust, manipulation of books of accounts through fictitious entities, and had routed funds through the shell companies and siphoned off the funds from the company’s accounts for their personal gains, causing losses worth ₹3,986 crore to the Public Sector Banks.
Investigations revealed that a web of shell companies was created, wherein the dummy directors of these shell companies were either the relatives/persons from ancestral village of Surana family or the employees of Surana group companies. The transactions of the three main group of companies were routed through those dummy/shell companies and, thereafter, the monies were siphoned off to other purposes, including purchasing properties through layering and obtaining benami properties in the name of the shell companies.
It was also revealed that Surana Group of Companies/Promoters had incorporated several companies in Cayman Island and British Virgin Islands in the name of dummy directors, and siphoned off money to park in those companies through four dummy companies in Singapore. Money was generated by these Singapore-based companies through the sale of goods exported by Indian entities. However, these Indian entities have subsequently written off the receivables in the books of accounts in India.
Dinesh Chand Surana was the main perpetrator of this money-laundering scheme and all shell companies were under his active control. Vijay Raj Surana aided in the transactions. Anand and Prabhakaran were the directors of the shell companies, who actively connived with the Surana Management in siphoning off funds and, thus, aided and abetted them in their activities of siphoning and laundering of public funds.
