New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday said it has attached assets worth more than Rs 44 crore of entities linked to Haryana Congress MLA Rao Dan Singh, his son and some others as part of a money-laundering investigation.
Rao Dan Singh (65) is a legislator from Mahendragarh. The Congress has again fielded him from the seat for the October 5 Haryana Assembly polls.
The four-term MLA and businessman contested the Lok Sabha polls held earlier in the year from the Bhiwani-Mahendragarh seat as a Congress nominee. He lost the contest to the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Dharambir Singh by a margin of more than 41,000 votes.
Rao Dan Singh is considered to be close to former chief minister and current leader of opposition in the Haryana Assembly Bhupinder Singh Hooda. The attachment includes 31 flats in Coban Residency, Sector 99A of Gurugram and a 2.25-acre land in Harsaru village of Gurugram of "entities belonging" to Rao Dan Singh and his son Akshat Singh, the ED said in a statement.
Flats and land parcels located in Delhi, Gurugram, Rewari (Haryana) and Jaipur (Rajasthan), belonging to entities linked with Suncity Projects Private Limited and ILD Group, have been also attached. The money-laundering case stems from a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) FIR against a company named Allied Strips Limited for allegedly committing a bank-loan fraud of Rs 1,392.86 crore. The consortium of banks was led by the Canara Bank.
According to the ED, Allied Strips Limited, which manufactured cold-rolled steel products, was admitted to insolvency proceedings under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) in 2018 and was eventually purchased by another company. The federal agency has claimed that entities linked to Singh received Rs 19 crore from the funds "diverted" from the alleged bank-loan fraud and this money was "invested" to purchase flats and land parcels.
"These entities indulged in window dressing of books of accounts by squaring off the amount by assigning the same to other individuals," it has alleged. "Rao Dan Singh and his family members are yet to join the investigation," the ED has said.
It had earlier said cash amounting to Rs 1.42 crore and incriminating documents related to undisclosed flats and lands, various lockers, trusts etc. were seized after searches were conducted at premises of the group entities and persons, including entities linked to Akshat Singh.
The alleged modus operandi of the fraud, according to the ED, included "siphoning off" the funds borrowed from the banks to other companies in the form of unsecured loans and advances, writing off debts of its various debtors, bogus transactions etc. and taking cash in return, which was invested for buying land and other long-term purposes.
