Indore (Madhya Pradesh): The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday provisionally attached 28 immovable assets valued at more than Rs 70 cr. in the sensational liquor fake challan ‘scam’. The scam caused huge revenue loss to the State government.
The attached properties include prime land parcels and residential flats located in the city, Mandsaur and Khargone belonging to several liquor contractors involved in the fraud.
‘The provisional attachment order issued on Friday under the provisions of the PMLA to prevent further dissipation of tainted assets. The agency has already shared the order with the Adjudicating Authority for confirmation. Further investigation into the money trail and identification of additional proceeds of crime is in progress. More arrests and attachments are likely in the coming days’ ED said in a statement on Saturday.
The city based Sub-Zonal office of ED initiated a money-laundering investigation on the basis of an FIR registered by Raoji Bazar Police Station of the city against multiple country-made and foreign liquor contractors. According to official information of ED, the accused devised a systematic modus operandi to cause financial loss to the state exchequer. The contractors prepared treasury challans for small amounts and the column ‘Rupees in Words’ was deliberately left blank. After depositing the lesser amount in the bank, they later tampered the figure column and filled inflated amount in words on the bank's copy and submitted thesecchallans to country liquor warehouses or in the office of District Excise Office to obtain No-Objection Certificates (NOCs). This enabled them to lift substantially larger quantities of liquor stock while paying only a fraction of the actual duty, basic licence fee and minimum guarantee amount.
Under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), during the probe ED established that prime accused Raju Dashwant, Ansh Trivedi and other liquor contractors jointly generated, possessed, concealed and projected proceeds of crime exceeding Rs 49 crore through scheduled offences of forgery, cheating and criminal conspiracy. Raju Dashwant and Ansh Trivedi both were earlier arrested by the ED and are presently in judicial custody.
