The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on October 15 said that it has provisionally attached 70 assets, including land, windmills, silver articles, diamond jewellery and bullion worth more than ₹315.60 crore, as part of an alleged bank fraud-linked money laundering probe against a former Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MP from Maharashtra, his family and businesses.
Ishwarlal Shankarlal Jain Lalwani, 77, who is perceived to be close to NCP chief Sharad Pawar, is the promoter of the Rajmal Lakhichand Jewellers Pvt. Ltd, R L Gold Pvt. Ltd. and Manraj Jewellers among others.
The immovable assets are located in Jalgaon, Mumbai, Thane, Sillod (in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar) and Kutch (Gujarat) among other areas were attached on October 13 under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002. The attached movable and immovable assets include the benami properties acquired by the promoters Mr. Ishwarlal Lalwani, Manish Ishwarlal Jain Lalwani and others.
According to the agency officials, the PMLA case stems from three FIRs registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) under various Sections of the Indian Penal Code alleging that the companies and its directors/ promoters were involved in offences of criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery and criminal misconduct, causing wrongful loss of more than ₹352.49 crore to the State Bank of India.
“The promoters had submitted fake financials to avail such loans and engaged in round-tripping of transactions to inflate the financials and booking bogus sale purchase transactions in books of accounts of the accused companies to siphon off the loan proceeds for investments in real estate properties, in collusion with the auditors of the companies,” the ED alleged.
The raids were carried out by the agency in connection with the case in August.
It had then claimed that various “discrepancies like bogus sale-purchase transactions being shown in the books of accounts with the main holding company, Rajmal Lakhichand Jalgaon partnership firm” were detected.
“Search and post-search investigative findings have revealed fictitious stock/missing stock inventories of bullion and gold jewellery in books, use of shell companies, employment of dummy directors etc,” the ED said, adding that further probe is on.
