New Delhi, Jan 27 (IANS) Immovable assets worth Rs 79.78 crore were provisionally attached by the Enforcement Directorate, Mumbai, in a case of Rs 220-crore bank fraud by a company, Sharon Bio Medicine Limited, and others, an official said on Monday.
The attached assets are in the form of flats, plots, hotel and agricultural lands located at Navi Mumbai, Mumbai, Satara, Raigad in Maharashtra and Dehradun, Haridwar, Pauri Garhwal in Uttarakhand, the official said in a statement.
The fresh seizures under PMLA, 2002 made on January 24 are a part of the ongoing probe in the case of bank fraud against Sharon Bio Medicine Limited and others, taking the total attachment and seizure in this case till date to Rs 96.20 crore, the statement said.
The company earlier faced ED raids in October last year in a case allegedly involving the use of forged documents and bogus contracts by the pharma company for causing a loss of Rs 220 crore to banks.
According to the ED statement, the probe revealed that the pharmaceutical company engaged in the manufacturing of active pharmaceutical ingredients allegedly availed credit facilities from banks before laundering the money.
The ED initiated an investigation on the basis of a case registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB), Mumbai against Sharon Bio Medicine Limited (SBML) and others under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 for committing fraud against banks by using bogus documents.
During the raid against the company on October 23, 2024, movable assets including bank funds, and Demat accounts valued at Rs 14.53 crore were seized or frozen along with various other incriminating documents, digital devices and immovable property-related documents, the statement said.
Further investigation and trailing of bank funds revealed that a web of shell companies was created with which initially SBML had made bogus sales and bogus purchases to inflate their turnover.
The firm furnished such bogus contracts and forged documents with banks to avail/enhance their credit facilities. After availing the loans, funds were siphoned off through multiple layers of shell entities created in the names of employees of SBML and relatives of key persons of SBML which were diverted for the creation of assets, the ED said.
–IANS
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