NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday said it has filed a chargesheet against industrialist Naveen Jindal, Chairman of Jindal Steel and Power Ltd (JSPL) and his company for money laundering in the coal block allocation case.
“The chargesheet is filed under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 and says that then Minister of State for Coal Late Dasari Narayana Rao wrote a favourable note dated July 27, 2007, to the Coal Secretary, the Chairman of the 35th Screening Committee for allocation of the coal block situated at Amarkonda-Murgadangal in Jharkhand for the proposed 1,000 MW power plants. In its probe it was found that after the allocation in favour of JSPL, Rs 2 crore was invested in Sowbhagya Media Ltd., a company controlled by Rao,”the official said.
The investigation revealed that the company Sowbhagya Media was controlled by the MoS Rao and the payment was done on the instruction of Director JSPL, through a shell company New Delhi Exim Pvt. Ltd, as quid pro quo.
The ED chargesheet also mentions that JSPL was not recommended by the Ministry of Power on account of their poor preparedness.
The chargesheet names Naveen Jindal, JSPL, Gagan Sponge Iron Pvt. Ltd. (GSIPL), JSPL's then advisor Anand Goel, Nihar Stocks Ltd Director B.S.N. Suryanarayan and Mumbai's Essar Power Ltd Executive Vice-Chairman Sushil Kumar Maroo, JSPL's Deputy Manager (Finance) Siddharth Madra, Deputy General Manager Rajeev Aggarwal, Sowbhagya Media Ltd, New Delhi Exim Pvt. Ltd., Jindal Reality Pvt. Ltd., Nihar Stocks Ltd., K. Ramakrishna Prasad, Rajeev Jain and Gyan Swaroop Garg.