The Enforcement Directorate has provisionally attached 94 properties valued at Rs 124 crore in a money laundering case against the Chennai-based Surana Group of companies, accused of siphoning off Rs 3,986 crores from public sector banks.

With this, the total attachment in the case stands at Rs 248.98 crore, if previous attached properties worth about Rs 124.95 crore are taken into account, the ED said.

According to the ED, the latest provisional attachment orders are for 78 immovable properties and 16 movable properties, together valued at Rs 124 crore. The properties belong to people and entities linked to the Surana Group of companies, which is into the manufacture and sale of gold jewellery.

The ED initiated money laundering investigations on the basis of three FIRs registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI’s) BF&SB branch in Bengaluru, against Surana Industries Limited & Others, Surana Power Limited & Others and Surana Corporation Limited & Others.

Dinesh Chand Surana, MD of Surana Industries Ltd and Surana Power Ltd, Vijay Raj Surana, MD of Surana Corporation Limited and two dummy directors of shell companies, P Anand and I Prabhakaran, were arrested by the ED on July 12, 2022. The ED has also filed prosecution complaints against the accused before a Special Court dealing with PMLA cases in Chennai.

The ED said its probe revealed that the three group companies defrauded the banks by floating a web of shell companies wherein they appointed its employees and relatives as Directors, Proprietors and Partners, and indulged in paper transactions with them without actual movement of goods. “..The credit capital of the banks were round tripped/ layered to the personal accounts of the promoters by projecting the bank funds as unsecured loans from their associate shell companies and same funds were then subsequently infused in the main Group companies as part of the promoters’ contribution, to enhance drawing power limits,” the ED alleged in a statement.

Some of the diverted funds were used to purchase movable and immovables properties in the names of various benami persons and companies, ED pointed out. These actions of the promoters and officials of the Surana Group led to the accounts becoming irregular, which ultimately led to the accounts becoming NPAs, the agency stated. Further probe is on, it stated. Shell companies were allegedly registered in tax heaven nations -- the Cayman Islands and British Virgin Islands -- using the dummy directors to park tainted money from entities based out of Singapore.

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