NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday carried out raids at 11 premises in Karnal, Delhi and Goa linked to Ashok Mittal, Sourabh Dhingra, Bharat Bhushan Mittal, Raman Singhal and others in connection with a Rs 155 crore money laundering probe, the agency said.
The case under PMLA has been registered against Mahesh Timber Pvt Ltd in which Deepak Singla, the Aam Aadmi Party’s Goa in-charge, was named as accused. The case is based on an FIR registered by the CBI under the Prevention of Corruption Act and involves an alleged fraud causing a loss of approximately `155.21 crore to Oriental Bank of Commerce and its consortium banks.
According to the ED, Singla, his brother Raman Singhal and their maternal uncle Ashok Kumar Mittal ran a network of interconnected firms in India and Singapore to execute fraudulent transactions. The total value of Foreign Letters of Credit originally sanctioned for Mahesh Timber was `21.48 crore; investigators allege the amount was fraudulently enhanced to `173.04 crore through forged Bills of Lading, Bills of Entry, contracts and other trade documents submitted to banks.
The federal agency has alleged that no actual import of timber ever took place. The ED told a Panchkula court during Singla’s remand proceedings that investigations by the CBI and the Directorate General of Systems and Data Management of the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs had established that a majority of the import documents were fake, forged and fabricated.
The agency has further alleged that a senior OBC branch manager, Surender Kumar Ranga, who has since been terminated, allegedly verbally agreed to enhance the Letters of Credit to an unlimited amount after Mittal allegedly promised to settle him in Singapore.
