The Directorate of Enforcement (ED) has provisionally attached assets worth ₹57.75 crore belonging to a few individuals in connection with the Karuvannur Service Cooperative Bank fraud case.
The agency had earlier attached properties worth ₹30 crore, including a resort in Thekkady owned by Bijoy, a person who had allegedly received illegal loans from the bank and invested in the resort.
It had also attached 117 immovable properties, including land and buildings, in Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, movable properties, including 11 vehicles and fixed deposits and credit balances in 92 bank accounts of individuals who were allegedly found actively involved in money laundering, said a communication issued by the agency on Friday.
The agency questioned T.V. Subhash, the Registrar of Cooperative Societies, Kerala, in connection with the case on Friday.
The ED began its investigation in the case based on an FIR registered by the Kerala Police.
The investigations revealed that loans were illegally sanctioned and disbursed to several individuals and their benamis from the bank without sufficient collaterals. The alleged fraud was committed by the secretary and the committee members of the bank in connivance with the then bank manager, the agency said.
Bogus loans were sanctioned by the bank on the same property multiple times without the knowledge of members of the society. The investigation also revealed that benami loans were sanctioned to persons who were not members of the bank and that too against inflated property valuations. Loans thus sanctioned were siphoned off and laundered by the accused beneficiaries, it said.
It had also arrested Satheesh Kumar, a money lender, P. P. Kiran, P. P. Aravindakshan, a CPI(M) councillor of the Wadakkanchery municipality, and C.K. Jils, an accountant of the bank, under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002. The arrested were the alleged beneficiaries of the illegally sanctioned loans, the communication said.
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