Rs 4,300 crore loan fraud: ED seizes Rs 67 crore assets of power company, officials

Nagpur, Oct 24 (IANS) The ED attached movable and immovable properties worth Rs 67.79 crore in the form of bank balances, lands, buildings and flats linked to a businessman and a coal-based power project company involved in a Rs 4,300 crore bank loan fraud, said an official on Friday.

The Nagpur zonal unit of the ED took action against properties situated across Maharashtra, Kolkata, Delhi and Andhra Pradesh in the name of Manoj Jayaswal, his family members and others.

The operation on October 16 was conducted under the provisions of PMLA, 2002, in the case against Corporate Power Limited and others. The total attachments/seizure/frozen bank assets in this case now stand at Rs 571 crore.

The money laundering case against the company and its officials is linked to a proposed coal-based power plant in Jharkhand of 1080 MW power for which a loan was taken from a consortium of 20 banks led by the Union Bank of India.

The ED initiated its PMLA investigation based on an FIR registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) against Corporate Power Limited, its promoters, directors, and others for criminal conspiracy, cheating, and forgery.

The federal agency probe revealed that the accused created a network of 800 shell companies and 5,000 bank accounts to misappropriate the loan funds that were declared non-performing assets (NPA) in 2013-14.

Earlier, the agency had conducted searches in Kolkata, Nagpur and Visakhapatnam in the case and recovered cash, documents, and seized movable assets like mutual funds, securities and term deposits.

The CBI, after registering an FIR, said in a statement in 2022 that the Union Bank of India, the lead lender of the consortium, declared the account as non-performing assets (NPA) on September 30, 2013, and subsequently, the other member consortium banks also classified the said account as NPA.

The accounts of the said borrower company were declared as fraudulent on October 25, 2019, the CBI said in a statement.

Shedding light on the modus operandi used in the Rs 4,307.87 crore loan fraud, the CBI said, “It was further alleged that between the years 2009 to 2013, the said borrower had submitted manipulated project cost statements and also diverted the bank funds.”

It was also alleged that the trade receivables, mainly including transactions to related parties and funds, were diverted to a web of various companies that were dummy accounts; accordingly, the borrower was able to siphon off the funds, the CBI statement said.

--IANS

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