‘Former home minister’s arrested aides involved in money laundering of around ₹100 cr.’
A special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court on Saturday granted custody till July 1 of Kundan Shinde and Sanjeev Palande to Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the money laundering case against former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh, and others.
While seeking their custody, after their arrest early on Saturday, the ED told the court, “Mr. Shinde has been instrumental in collecting cash from suspended assistant police officer Sachin Vaze on behalf of Mr. Deshmukh. Mr. Palande was the then private secretary to Mr. Deshmukh and was instrumental in passing on instructions of Mr. Deshmukh with regard to transfer postings and collection of monies from orchestra bars and further, analysing and assessing the work of collection of tainted monies through police officials.”
ED said that the duo have emerged as important cogs in the wheels and were directly involved in money laundering around ₹100 crore.
The ED said, “Mr. Deshmukh, by virtue of his earlier position as home minister of Maharashtra government has received amounts to the tune of approximately ₹4.70 crore from orchestra bar owners/managers for smooth functioning of bars and the said bribe money was apparently used by him through his son Hrishikesh Deshmukh for providing cash to Delhi-based paper companies, and after layering the same was routed to the Shri Sai Shikshan Sanstha Trust in the form of donation, a Trust of Shri Anil Deshmukh and his family members.”
“Suspended assistant police officer Sachin Vaze, currently in Taloja Central Jail, collected money amounting to ₹4.70 crore from various orchestra bar owners/managers from December 2020 and January 2021,” the ED pointed out.
In its arguments, the ED has relied upon the order passed by Bombay High Court on April 5 directing the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to conduct a preliminary inquiry against Mr. Deshmukh following which an FIR was lodged against him. Soon thereafter a money laundering complaint was registered by ED.
ED stated, “It is revealed that there are 11 companies directly controlled by family members of Mr. Deshmukh. Further, another set of 13 companies have also come to light which are in the names of close associates of Deshmukh family and controlled by family members of Mr. Deshmukh. Subsequently, various bank account statements of these entities and individuals were analysed and it was revealed that money is flowing from companies indirectly controlled by family members of Mr. Deshmukh to companies directly controlled by family members of Mr. Deshmukh and vice versa. From the analysis of accounts of these companies it is clear that there is no rationale for transfers and can thus be said that these series of transactions were meant for inflating balance sheets and layering of money from one company to another.”
On June 25, ED conducted searches at six premises including the residential and office premises of the directors/shareholders of the companies indirectly controlled by family members of Mr. Deshmukh at Nagpur, Ahmedabad and Mumbai. Statements of six family members/directors have been recorded which indicate they were indirectly controlling the business activities in various companies, the ED said.
