ED arrests four accused in Chhattisgarh illegal coal scam

RAIPUR, (ANI): The Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested four more accused under PMLA in the illegal coal levy scam of Chhattisgarh. Accused persons were produced before the PMLA Special Court at Raipur. The court granted three days of ED custody till January 30 for all four accused persons.

ED had earlier issued a Provisional Attachment Order (PAO) attaching proceeds of crime worth Rs 152.5 crore and filed a Prosecution Complaint under PMLA. Recently, searches were conducted in Chhattisgarh, Delhi and Pune on specific inputs. ED arrested Deepesh Taunk, a close confidant of one of the prime accused in the case and Saumya Chaurasia, Deputy Secretary in the Chief Minister’s Office who was knowingly involved in Money Laundering.

The central agency also arrested mining officers Sandeep Kumar Nayak of Surajpur and Shiv Shankar Nag of Korba who knowingly and willingly assisted the syndicate of Suryakant Tiwari in committing extortion and acquisition of the proceeds of crime, according to the ED.

Further, ED arrested Rajesh Chaudhary a conman cheating people by claiming to work as a middleman to settle cases.

ED investigation has established that close family members of Sunil Agarwal, an accused arrested by ED and presently in judicial custody were making desperate efforts to secure release of Sunil Agarwal, soon after his arrest by ED on October 12, 2022. At that time, this self-acclaimed ‘liaisoner’, got in touch with the relatives of Sunil Agarwal, said the ED statement.

Since, Rajesh Agarwal had acquired part of the proceeds of the crime as revealed by investigation, on getting specific intelligence inputs, ED launched an operation on its own and Rajesh Chaudhary was traced and arrested under PMLA.

During his interrogation, it was discovered that he had also created fake ID Cards of ED officer and was also declaring himself as an ED employee in various KYC documents submitted to banks. (ANI)