CHENNAI: The Enforcement Directorate has provisionally attached 78 immovable properties and 16 movable properties valued at Rs 124 crore in the possession of various persons and entities linked to the Chennai based Surana Group of Companies under the provisions of PMLA, 2002 in connection with three cases of bank fraud involving Rs 3,986 crore of principal outstanding Amount to the public sector banks.
ED had earlier attached properties valued at Rs. 124.95 crore and the total attachment in the case stands at Rs 248.98 crore.
ED initiated money laundering investigation on the basis of three FIRs by Central Bureau of Investigation, BF&SB, Bengaluru registered against Surana Industries Limited & others, Surana Power Limited and Surana Corporation Limited and others.
ED Investigations have revealed that these three companies of Surana Group have defrauded the banks by floating a web of shell companies wherein they appointed its employees/ relatives as directors/ proprietors/ 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 of the company 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 the drawing power limits.
Further, some of the diverted funds were used to purchase movable/ immovables properties in the names of various benami persons/ companies. These actions of the promoters/ officials of the Surana Group led to the accounts becoming irregular which ultimately led to accounts becoming NPA, said a press release from the ED.
Based on the investigations conducted, Dinesh Chand Surana, MD, Surana Industries Limited & Surana Power Ltd, Vijay Raj Surana, MD Surana Corporation Limited and two dummy directors of shell companies, P Anand and I Prabhakaran, were arrested in July last year.