The Enforcement Directorate (ED), on Wednesday, filed over 6,000 pages chargesheet, called prosecution complaint in ED’s parlance, in connection with global tours and travel company Cox & Kings Group (CKG) case.
The agency filed the chargesheet before the special court under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The ED, on November 26, arrested CKG promoter Peter Kerkar in an alleged money laundering case. The agency had earlier termed Kerkar as the “mastermind” in the siphoning of proceeds of crime and had lodged complaints against his accomplices and now co-accused with the ulterior motive to escape.
The agency probe is based on a complaint registered at Nagpada police station upon a magistrate court’s order on a private complaint by Kerkar himself. In the course of the investigation, the ED alleged that Kerkar himself is the mastermind and has now arraigned him as a co-accused.
According to ED’s submission before the court in the case, loans sanctioned from Yes Bank had been diverted by Kerkar in connivance with the co-accused in the case - former Chief Financial Officer at Cox and Kings Anil Khandelwal and the group's internal auditor Naresh Jain. The money had been diverted to a private firm Easygo and there on to other private firms Redkite and Promytheone. It was also diverted overseas.
Investigations in the past revealed that Yes Bank has a total outstanding of Rs 3,642 crore with respect to CKG. The ED said that CKG had forged its consolidated financials by manipulating the balance sheets of overseas subsidiaries. In addition, some board resolutions submitted to the banks to sanction the loans were also found to be forged.
Investigation also revealed that, during FY 2015 to 2019, Rs 3,908 crore in sales were made to 15 non-existent/fictitious customers. The majority of collection shown in the ledgers, from Ezeego (another group entity of CKG ), was not found in the bank statements.
There are 15 high value fictitious debtors reflected in the account books and another 147 sets of customers also appeared to be suspicious and non-existent, the agency had earlier said.
