Court extends custody of Deputy Sec to Chhattisgarh CM in money laundering case

The ED has provisionally attached movable and 91 immovable properties worth ₹152.31 crore belonging to bureaucrats including Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel’s Deputy Secretary Saumya Chaurasia, IAS Sameer Vishnoi, Suryakant Tiwari among others, according to news agency ANI.

ED investigation revealed that policy changes were made and director mining issued an order dated July 15, 2020, to modify an existing online system of issuance of transport permits, to introduce a manual layer where coal users were forced to apply for NOC with State Mining officers.

ED has conducted searches at more than 75 locations including the Mining Departments at DC Offices of Korba and Raigad and collected incriminating evidence. ED has recorded statements from around 100 individuals.

Out of it, 65 belong to Suryakant Tiwari, 21 belong to Saumya Chaurasia and five belong to IAS Sameer Bishnoi. The attached properties include cash, jewellery, flats, coal washeries and plots of land located in Chhattisgarh.

ED investigation has revealed that an amount of at least ₹540 Crore has been extorted in the last 2 years.

Armed with this government order, the extortion at the rate of ₹25 per tonne of transported Coal, started in right earnest. Suryakant Tiwari was the main henchman at the ground level who deployed his employees in various regions to extort money from Coal transporters and industrialists and his team was physically coordinating with lower-level government functionaries and Coal transporters and representatives of user companies.

Since his employees were spread across the State, they maintained WhatsApp groups, excel sheets of each Coal Delivery Order and the extorted amounts and shared them with Suryakant Tiwari, who in turn maintained detailed handwritten diaries of the incoming bribe amounts and their utilization for purchase of Benami lands, payment of bribes, payments for political expenditure etc.

ED is investigating the entire gamut of transactions in relation to the extortion racket.

ED has analyzed thousands of handwritten Diary entries. ED has not merely relied on the Diary entries but has done a detailed investigation including Bank Account analysis, analysis of seized WhatsApp chats, recording of the Statements etc to corroborate the Diary Entries.

ED has unravelled the modus operandi where influential members of the Extortion syndicate like Suryakant Tiwari, Saumya Chaurasia, Sameer Vishnoi etc have used their relatives to create Benami assets.

Land deals were done at minimum cheque amounts and a large amount of cash out of the extortion collection was infused to buy the assets. Most of the time, the benamidaars did not even have the minimum capital to do the land deals. Then small unsecured loans were taken from multiple people on payment of cash to create capital to do land deals.

Further, after the IT raids on 30th June 2022, in a panic to avoid attachment by IT/ED, a large number of assets were sold to Sunil Agarwal as he was not covered in the IT searches. To prevent further alienation of the tainted assets, provisional attachment order has been issued.

Earlier, in this case, ED had arrested Sameer Vishnoi IAS, Sunil Agarwal & Laxmikant Tiwari on 13.10.2022. ED arrested Suryakant Tiwari on October 30, 2022. On December 2, 2022, ED arrested Saumya Chaurasia. On December 9, 2022, ED filed a prosecution complaint against Suryakant Tiwari, Sameer Vishnoi IAS, Laxmikant Tiwari, Sunil Agarwal and others before the PMLA Special Court Raipur. Ms Saumya Chaurasia is presently in the custody of ED. 

(with inputs from ANI)