FORMER The Enforcement Directorate has informed a special court in Kolkata that Trinamool minister Partha Chatterjee, who is currently being held in connection with the investigation into the teacher recruitment scam, allegedly used proceeds of the crime to set up bogus companies with dummy directors, including a person who ran errands for his assistant and co-accused Arpita Mukherjee.
According to a charge sheet submitted by the ED on September 20, Arpita allegedly made a request for leniency in light of her revelation against the former Industries and Education Minister in the Mamata Banerjee administration and implicated Chatterjee.
In judicial custody are Chatterjee and Arpita, who were both detained in July.
In addition to Chatterjee and Arpita, the ED charged six businesses via their directors and put a value on all of the movable and immovable property at Rs 48.22 crore. This was in addition to the Rs 49.80 crore in cash and jewelry valued at more than Rs 5 crore recovered from two flats owned by Arpita in Kolkata, according to the agency.
Regarding Chatterjee’s involvement, the ED claimed that he established dummy directors and created at least six fictitious firms with the express purpose of laundering the contaminated cash.
One of the suspected dummy directors of M/s Sentry Engineering Pvt Ltd, a dummy firm controlled by Shri Partha Chatterjee through Ms. Arpita Mukherjee, was Arpita’s errand boy, the investigation agency claimed.
The ED asserted that Chatterjee’s de-facto management of the firms is obvious from Arpita and the other co-statements, accused’s and it claimed that he reportedly put the scam’s earnings in the accounts of the fictitious companies and then bought real estate in their names.
The agency claimed that Chatterjee and the other co-accused were liable to be penalized under Section 4 of the PMLA for money laundering.
The ED cited 31 LIC insurance policies in Arpita’s name that were opened in March 2012 as evidence of their close relationship, with Chatterjee serving as the nominee.
claiming that Arpita acknowledged in her testimony to the ED on August 4 that Shri Partha Chatterjee is the rightful owner of the sizable sum of cash hidden at her residence.
According to the ED, Arpita sought to file a formal application regarding Chatterjee’s alleged involvement in the scheme. The statement read, in this regard, she has made an application for recognizing this revelation as an application for taking a lenient approach under the terms of the law.
The agency went into detail about the exchange of money that occurred when potential employees paid middlemen between Rs 7 and Rs 7.5 lakh each in exchange for a job.
News Mania Desk
