ED seizes over Rs 1-Cr cash, undisclosed assets during raids against Cong MLA, others

New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday said it has seized Rs 1.42 crore in cash, documents related to more than 30 “undisclosed” flats and land during searches against Haryana Congress MLA Rao Dan Singh, his son and some business entities as part of a bank-loan fraud-linked money-laundering investigation.

The raids were launched on Thursday (July 18) in Mahendragarh and Gurugram in Haryana, apart from Delhi and Jamshedpur (Jharkhand), against the legislator, his family, a linked company called Suncity Projects Private Limited, another company called Allied Strips Limited (ASL) and its promoters Mohinder Agrawal, Gaurav Agrawal and some others.

ASL manufactures cold roll steel products.

The money-laundering investigation stems from a CBI FIR filed against the accused, who were charged with committing “fraud” by siphoning off and diverting funds, criminal misappropriation, criminal breach of trust and cheating, and causing wrongful loss of more than Rs 1,392.86 crore to a consortium of banks led by the Canara Bank.

The search operations led to the seizure of cash amounting to Rs 1.42 crore, incriminating documents about 32 undisclosed flats and land, various lockers, trusts etc. from the premises of the group entities and persons, including entities of Akshat Singh, son of Rao Dan Singh, the ED said in a statement.

It, however, did not specify what exactly was seized from where.

Rao Dan Singh (65) represents the Mahendragarh seat in the 90-member Haryana Assembly. Election to the Haryana Assembly is slated to be held later this year.

The four-term MLA and businessman had contested the recent Lok Sabha polls from the Bhiwani-Mahendragarh seat as a Congress nominee. He lost the electoral contest to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Dharambir Singh by a margin of more than 41,000 votes.

He is considered to be close to former chief minister and current leader of opposition in the Haryana Assembly Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

The ED claimed that the modus operandi of the alleged bank-loan fraud “included siphoning off of the funds borrowed from banks to other companies in the form of unsecured loans and advances, writing off debts of its various debtors, bogus transactions etc”.

The searched entities have been found to have falsified their books of accounts, it claimed.

ED sources had earlier said Rao Dan Singh’s family and companies took loan money from ASL but never returned it and later, these funds were written off. (PTI)