The Enforcement Directorate provisionally attached 707 acres of land estimated to be worth Rs 1,460 crore in and around Aamby Valley City in Maharashtra’s Lonavala in connection with the money laundering case against Sahara India and its group entities, the agency said Tuesday.
The central agency said that the land was bought in benani names with the funds allegedly diverted from Sahara group entities.
The action was carried out by the ED’s Kolkata zone office under the provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.
The agency started their investigation in the matter on the basis of three predicate offences of cheating and criminal conspiracy against Humara India Credit Co-operative Society Ltd. (HICCSL) and others by Odisha, Bihar and Rajasthan Police.
Later, the number of FIRs crossed 500 after victims started filing criminal cases against the Sahara Group entities and related persons.
Of the total FIRs, around 300 of them are registered for offences scheduled under the PMLA, 2002.
The agency said that its investigation revealed that Sahara Group was running a Ponzi scheme through various entities such as HICCSL, Sahara Credit Cooperative Society Limited (SCCSL), Sahara Universal Multipurpose Cooperative Society (SUMCS), Stars Multipurpose Cooperative Society Limited (SMCSL), Sahara India Commercial Corporation Ltd (SICCL), Sahara India Real Estate Corporation Ltd (SIRECL), Sahara Housing Investment Corporation Ltd (SHICL) and other Sahara group entities.
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The group has allegedly cheated the depositors and agents by alluring them with high returns and commissions respectively and utilised the funds collected in a non-regulated manner without any information or control of the depositors, ED said.
They further avoided repayment and instead forced ot allured the depositors to redeposit their maturity amount, switching or transferring deposits from one scheme to other scheme and entity, the central probe agency added.
The ED also found that in order to camouflage non-repayment, the accused group manipulated the books of accounts.
Besides this, in order to perpetuate the Ponzi scheme, they continued to accept fresh deposits despite not being able to repay the existing maturity amount.
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“Part of the collected money was siphoned and diverted for creating benami assets, for their personal expenses and lavish lifestyle,” the ED said in its statement.
Central agency’s investigation also revealed that the accused group has also disposed off the assets of Sahara group and received part of payment in undisclosed cash in lieu of sale of land.
Earlier, ED had conducted searches wherein unexplained cash of Rs 2.98 crore was seized.
In 2017, the Supreme Court ordered attachment of prime property worth Rs 39,000 crore at Aamby Valley in Pune of Sahara Group chief Subrata Roy in cases against the business tycoon for which he already spent time in Tihar jail.
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Roy, who set up a multi-million dollar business conglomerate, was sent to jail by the top court in 2014 after his group failed to repay the amount to two crore small investors as ordered by the court.
On November 14, 2023, Roy died in a Mumbai hospital of a cardiorespiratory arrest.