New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has provisionally attached Rs 10.29 crore of the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) in the form of a demand draft tendered by the party during the investigation into a money laundering case allegedly involving former party MP Kanwar Deep Singh and his firm Alchemist Group of companies.
The federal probe agency claims it found that Singh — a former Rajya Sabha MP who switched to the TMC from Jharkhand Mukti Morcha in 2011 — lured investors into investing in his companies on the pretext of sky-rocketing returns but diverted those funds into his other companies.
Of the funds collected, Rs 10.29 crore was allegedly paid to aviation companies for services availed by the party’s star campaigners, such as the West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, former Union minister Mukul Roy, party MPs Munmun Sen and Nusrat Jahan during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
The ED said that Singh’s Alchemist Group of companies collected more than Rs 1,800 crore from investors in its companies, named Alchemist Holdings Limited and Alchemist Township India Limited, on the pretext of offering high returns in the form of flats or land plots or higher interest rates.
A statement released by ED Monday said that the investigation further revealed that a part of the money collected by cheating the public was used by the Alchemist Group for making payments to aviation companies on behalf of the AITC.
“ED investigation also revealed that an amount of Rs 10.29 crore was paid by Alchemist Airways Pvt Ltd to various aviation/helicopter companies for the aviation services availed by AITC party during the campaigning for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections for its star campaigners like Ms. Mamta Banerjee, the Hon’ble CM of West Bengal, Mukul Roy, ex-Union Railway Minister, Munmun Sen, Nusrat Jahan, MP, TMC etc.,” the statement added.
Responding to the provisional attachment by the ED, TMC leader Kunal Ghosh Monday told media persons that the agency had informed the party about a pending bill and the party paid the bill by demand draft in the name of the agency’s joint director.
The ED’s case stems from a case filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which took over the case from the Uttar Pradesh Police on the government’s request in July 2022.
The case was first registered in UP’s Azamgarh district based on a complaint by Vijay Kumar Chauhan, who alleged “cheating and misappropriation of funds invested by him and other investors in companies owned by Singh,” according the CBI FIR, seen by ThePrint.
According to the CBI, the complainant Chauhan and other investors invested their money based on false promises that their corpus would grow twice, thrice and 10 times in six, nine and 16 years, respectively, but they did not get their money back.
Singh was arrested by the ED in January 2021 in another money laundering case registered in 2018 based on an FIR lodged by the Kolkata Police, but he was later released on bail.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
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