CHENNAI: Controversial sand mining baron Shekar Reddy procured gold bars to conceal illegal earnings, charged senior officials at the Enforcement Directorate, adding that the 30 kg gold bars that the IT seized from his auditor’s residence were purchased through demonetised currency.
Officials from ED, which attached 30 kg of seized gold bars worth Rs 8.5 crore under Prevention of Money Laundering Act, said investigations revealed that auditor Premkumar bought them using unaccounted money from SRS Mining owned by Shekar Reddy. The auditor admitted that he used to receive money from Reddy’s aide Srinivasulu to purchase gold bars.
ED joint director K S V V Prasad said Reddy’s partners in SRS Mining,
Ramachandran and Rathinam, denied any link to the conversion of unaccounted cash for gold, and said that it could be as per Reddy’s instructions. Prasad added that the duo admitted during interrogations that they used to transport huge amounts of unaccounted cash by road, for which they did not maintain any accounts against the collections, expenses etc., to conceal illegal earnings from the unaccounted income.
It is alleged that SRS Mining obtained sand from the government mines at cheaper rate and did the second sales at stockyard without any receipts, thus avoiding VAT and other levy. This is a very lucrative deal: 400 cubic feet sand is sold for about `1,300 from the government mine. But in the unofficial market, the same volume of sand is sold for as high as `10,000.