The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has registered a criminal case of money laundering against ABG Shipyard Ltd, its former promoters along others for allegedly cheating a consortium of banks of over ₹22,842 crore, reported news agency PTI, quoting sources, on Wednesday.
The case has been filed under various sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) after the investigators studied the CBI complaint and the forensic audit report.
Officials reportedly said that the ED will specifically look into the alleged “diversion” of bank loan funds, the creation of shell firms to launder the public money and the role of the executives of the company and others.
This comes a day after the CBI said it has issued lookout notices against Rishi Kamlesh Agarwal, the former chairman and managing director of ABG Shipyard.
It had also named the then executive director Santhanam Muthaswamy, directors Ashwini Kumar, Sushil Kumar Agarwal and Ravi Vimal Nevetia and another company ABG International Pvt Ltd for alleged offences of criminal conspiracy, cheating, criminal breach of trust and abuse of official position under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Prevention of Corruption Act.
The accused in the ED case are the same, they said.
CBI in a statement said Look Out Circulars (LOCs) have already been opened by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) against the accused, while maintaining that the accused have been located in India.
In continuation of the investigation, the CBI conducted searches at 13 locations on 12 February. The officials claimed they had received several incriminating documents, such as books of accounts of the accused borrower company, which was being scrutinised.
The State Bank of India (SBI) had also opened LOC against the main accused on 8 November 2019, on which the central investigation agency had sought some clarifications on 12 March 2020.
The bank filed a fresh complaint in August that year. After “scrutinising” for over one-and-a-half years, the CBI acted on the complaint, filing an FIR on 7 February.
The officials said the case was big with voluminous data and records as 28 banks were involved and needed verification before moving with an FIR.
They said the company had allegedly diverted funds to a lot of firms which also needed detailed scrutiny.
With inputs from agencies.
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