New Delhi, Jan 18 (UNI) Enforcement Directorate (ED) has filed prosecution complaint on Friday under Section 45 of Prevention of Money Laundering Act against Bhushan Power & Steel Limited (BPSL) Chairman cum Managing Director Sanjay Singal and 23 other persons including entry operators based in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata who had provided accommodation entries facilitating the process of money laundering, an official release said here on Saturday.
The Court, after holding that there are sufficient grounds to proceed against the accused persons, has taken cognizance of the offence under Section 3 read with Section 70 of the PMLA against all the 25 accused persons and ordered issuance of summons, the probing agency said.
At present accused Sanjay Singal who was arrested ED on November 22, 2019, is in judicial custody.
During the investigation, ED has provisionally attached proceeds of crime valued at Rs 204.31 crore in the form of immovable properties belonging to the group companies under the control of Sanjay Singal on January 20.
The attached assets consist of movable and immovable properties in Delhi and London.
ED investigation had revealed that an amount of Rs 204.31 crore was diverted out of bank loan funds of BPSL, which were utilized for acquisition of assets in India and abroad by Sanjay Singal.
The federal probe agency move comes after the CBI’s FIR on April 5 last year, under sections 120-B read with 420, 468, 471 & 477A of Indian Penal Code & Section 13(2) read with 13(1)(d) of Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 against BPSL and others fora criminal conspiracy among themselves and with unknown public servants of banks and others to cheat banks, financial institutions, government exchequer, they dishonestly and fraudulently diverted huge amount of bank funds through companies, shell companies, entities and deliberately defaulted in repayment and also claimed inadmissible Cenvat credit.
“They did not use the bank funds for the purpose for which the same were sanctioned, committed forgery for the purpose of cheating, used forged documents and falsified the accounts causing wrongful loss to the lending banks, financial institutions, government exchequer and corresponding wrongful gain to themselves”, ED said in statement.
Investigation further revealed that the accused persons namely Sanjay Singal and others had diverted huge amount of funds out of loans taken by BPSL from 33 banks and financial institutions during 2007-2014 which were used for creation of assets for themselves.
So far, total assets worth Rs 4229.54 crore have been identified and provisionally attached under PMLA, the probing agency said adding that further investigation in this case is under progress.

UNI AKS SHK2059