CHENNAI: The Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) Chennai zonal office has provisionally attached two immovable properties worth Rs 100.92 crore, belonging to Orathanadu MLA R Vaithilingam, in a money laundering case, an official release said on Wednesday. Vaithilingam had served as minister for housing and urban development during the AIADMK regime between 2011 and 2016.
The attachment was made under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2022, on January 9. The properties are in the name of M/s Muthammal Estates Private Limited, owned by Vaithilingam’s family, ED said. The central agency’s investigation was initiated on the basis of an FIR registered by the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption, Chennai, under Section 120B of the IPC and Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, against Vaithilingam, for alleged corruption in 2016 during his term as minister.
It is alleged that he had accepted a bribe of Rs 27.90 crore from Shriram Properties & Infrastructure Private Limited in exchange for granting planning permission for a real estate project.
Earlier, ED searches conducted during the probe uncovered a carefully planned modus operandi involving the use of shell entities to layer and disguise bribe payments as share application money, the agency said.
These payments, purportedly made by Shriram Group entities for the purchase of land, were instead routed through multiple shell entities and ultimately parked in M/s Muthammal Estates Private Limited, a company controlled by Vaithilingam’s family members. The illicit funds were then utilised to acquire various immovable properties in Tiruchy, which have now been provisionally attached. Further probe is on, ED added.
Vaithilingam was expelled from the AIADMK along with former chief minister O Panneerselvam in 2022.