Kolkata, Nov 11 — The Enforcement Directorate (ED)'s Kolkata Zonal Office has filed a supplementary charge sheet against Kuldeep Rai Sharma, former Andaman and Nicobar Islands MP and and 13 more persons and entities in the Andaman and Nicobar State Co-operative Bank (ANSCBL) scam before the Special PMLA Court in Port Blair, the central probe agency said in a statement on Wednesday.
The persons and entities newly named as accused include Jayanta Bala, J. Suresh Chandran (empanelled property value of ANSCBL), John Robert Babu, Anil Kumar, Md. Ali, P. Abhilash and Kiran Lal N. H. along with their companies. With this, the total number of accused persons in the case stands at 52.
At the same time, the ED issued a provisional attachment order under the provisions of PMLA, 2002, attaching 35 immovable properties and five movable properties worth around Rs 121.35 crore in the ANSCBL fraud case.
The attached assets include land parcels, a hotel, two semi-submarine tourist vessels and bank balances lying in three bank accounts, the central agency said.
The ED investigation was initiated on the basis of an FIR registered by the Crime and Economic Offences Police Station of the Andaman and Nicobar Police, against Kuldeep Rai Sharma and others.
The investigation revealed that Kuldeep Rai Sharma, former MP and the then Vice-Chairman of ANSCBL, along with bank officials and his aides, received large sums of loans sanctioned through shell companies in violation of banking rules.
The loan money was then diverted and never repaid.
The accused floated 23 shell companies with no real business, using aides and other persons as dummy directors.
Loans of about Rs 301.50 crore were sanctioned to 21 of these companies, and loans of about Rs 271 crore in 18 of these companies have turned non-performing asset (NPA).
The loan money was taken out in cash or moved through several accounts and was used to buy land and other assets in the names of family members and associates.
Besides these 23 shell companies, huge loans were illegally sanctioned to various other companies, including the companies belonging to the family members of Kuldeep Rai Sharma.
Such loans were also siphoned off and not repaid.
The total proceeds of crime identified in this case exceeds Rs 500 crore.
The senior bank officials, including Kuldeep Rai Sharma, Managing Director K. Murugan (since deceased) took a bribe of about five per cent of the loan amount.
In many cases loans were sanctioned in excess and a share of such sanctioned loan was taken in cash or through shell companies.
During the investigation, the ED found that most of the provisionally attached properties were either bought with the diverted loan money or pledged with the bank at highly inflated values to get the fraudulent loans.
In many cases, land bought for about Rs 1 crore was shown as worth Rs 10 crore or more in the loan files, with the help of a bank empanelled value who assisted the accused persons in fraudulent loan sanctioning.