Kolkata: With two Trinamool Congress heavyweights in Partha Chatterjee and Anubrata Mondal arrested under separate incidents of alleged scams, central agencies ED and CBI have so far been busy unraveling the network of transactions, contacts and properties belonging to the duo in their respective cases. The latest development in the probes, however, appears to point towards a money trail.
According to sources inside CBI and ED, a huge number of shell companies have been unearthed in the state, with the approximate number learned to be more than one lakh. As per officials, the timeline of the bogus enterprises mushrooming inside the state ranges from 2016 to 2022.
Also read: TMC's Anubrata Mondal sent to 14 days in judicial custody
A total of 1,18,535 shell companies had been identified in West Bengal on March 31, 2016. The count subsequently increased to 1,28,201 a year later, on March 31, 2017, officials stated. The count mysteriously decreased in 2021, however, with the count coming down to 1,23,617.
The Enforcement Directorate, meanwhile, is mulling taking a leap into the Mondal case, which is currently being probed by the CBI. The central agency, as per a report by news agency IANS, is looking to join the dots from figures in the accounts of shell companies or the transactions from the bank accounts involved in the matter. The second step it is looking to take is to integrate the persons concerned on the basis of the figures available after analyzing such accounts.
