Madras HC grants conditional bail to Sekhar Reddy, his two associates in Money Laundering Case

Madras High Court today granted conditional bail to Industrialist and  sand mining baron Sekhar Reddy and his two associates in connection with Money Laundering Case.

When the bail plea came up for hearing, Judge Baskaran granted bail with condition that Reddy should produce sureties of Rs 10 lakh and his aides K Srinivasulu and Premakumar should furnish Rs five lakh.

The court also issued orders that three of them should appear before Enforcement Directorate (ED) office at New Delhi and sign the register at 10.30 am daily till further orders.

The ED had attached properties of Reddy to the tune of Rs 34 crore after seizing 177 kg of unaccounted gold worth about Rs 50 crore and Rs 142 crore in new currencies during the raids. 

ED is conducting investigation under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) against Sekhar Reddy and his associates based on the CBI cases registered against them in relation to seizure by the Income Tax (IT) department.

During the investigation, Reddy had stated that cash seized by the IT authorities belongs to his SRS mining Company and he admitted that it was unaccounted money. Reddy's associate Srinivasulu also stated that the former used to receive money from SRS mining and use a part of the amount for converting into gold bars through Premakumar as per the instructions of  Reddy.

Accordingly, the remaining cash was kept at various premises and the same was earlier recovered and seized by Income Tax department. Though, Srinivasulu has not divulged the modus operandi of converting old currencies into new currencies, the investigations revealed that the demonitised notes were changed to new one through various persons on commission basis.