The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has attached assets worth over Rs 70 crore of three entities, including a company that owns actor Shah Rukh Khan's IPL cricket team, in connection with its money laundering probe in the Rose Valley ponzi scam case, the agency said on Monday, 3 February.
The three entities are Multiple Resorts Pvt Ltd, Kolkata’s St Xavier’s College and Knight Riders Sports Pvt Ltd.
The agency said in a statement that “movable and immovable properties belonging to various entities and individuals who received funds from Rose Valley group and related entities having book value of Rs 70.11 crore have been provisionally attached under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).”
The bank accounts of the three entities, that have been attached, have deposits totalling Rs 16.20 crore, with Rs 11.87 crore funds in the account of Knight Riders Sports Pvt Ltd.
The Knight Riders Sports Pvt Ltd owns the ‘Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR)‘ Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket team and its directors include Shah Rukh Khan’s wife Gauri Khan, actor Juhi Chawla’s husband Jay Mehta, KKR CEO Venkatesh Mysore and two others.
Mysore was questioned in this case by ED's Kolkata office in October last year.
The agency has also attached 24 acres of land at Ramnagar and Mahishdal in Purba Medinipur district of West Bengal, a flat at Dilkap Chambers in Mumbai, an acre of land at Jyoti Basu Nagar and a hotel of the Rose Valley group in Kolkata, it said.
The ED registered an FIR against the Rose Valley group, its chairman Gautam Kundu and others under the PMLA in 2014.
Kundu was arrested by the agency in Kolkata in 2015 and is in judicial custody at present.
The ED has filed multiple charge sheets in Kolkata and Bhubaneswar courts in this connection and total attachments in this case are now worth Rs 4,750 crore.
The group has been charged by the ED and the CBI with “illegally and fraudulently collecting deposits from public with the intention to cheat them by falsely promising high returns on their investment,” thereby perpetrating a ponzi-like fraud.
The probe found that the business group “collected more than Rs 17,520 crore from public throughout the country by luring depositors with false promises of high returns and interest on their deposits. Out of the total, an amount of Rs 10,850 crore was refunded and remaining Rs 6,670 crore still unpaid that constitutes the proceeds of crime,” the ED said.
The company diverted and siphoned the amount through cheating and had no real business that could repay this amount, the agency charged.
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