Coal levy case: ED attaches assets of 2 Chhattisgarh MLAs, PCC treasurer

NEW DELHI: Ninety immovable assets, luxury vehicles, jewellery and cash worth over Rs 51 crore belonging to Chattisgarh Congress MLAs Devender Yadav, Chandradev Prasad Rai and PCC treasurer Ramgopal Agarwal among others have been attached in a money laundering case linked to alleged illegal coal levy in the state, the ED said on Tuesday.

The properties frozen also belong to IAS officer Ranu Sahu, coal trader and prime accused in the case-- Suryakant Tiwari-- apart from state Congress spokesperson R P Singh and local party leader Vinod Tiwari.

Sahu was questioned by the ED few months back when she was officiating as the Raigad district collector.

The properties have been provisionally attached under the criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), the agency said in a statement. They are worth a total Rs 51.40 crore.

The federal probe agency claimed that it has ''established direct evidence of financial linkages of the above persons with Suryakant Tiwari.'' ''Assets created by layering of the proceeds of crime or equivalent assets have been identified for attachment proceedings under PMLA,'' the agency said.

The latest action comes days after the ED arrested Congress leader and Raipur Mayor Aijaz Dhebar's elder brother Anwar Dhebar in an alleged liquor syndicate case worth Rs 2,000 crore in the state.

Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel on Monday called the ED an ''agent'' of the Bharatiya Janata Party and dubbed the agency's claim of unearthing an alleged liquor scam in the state as false and baseless. As the Assembly polls were nearing in the state, the ''disappointed'' BJP was trying to defame the Congress government using the ED, he claimed.

The agency had earlier attached assets of IAS officer Sameer Vishnoi and powerful state service bureaucrat Saumya Chaurasia worth a total Rs 170 crore in this case. The total value of attachment now stands at Rs 221.5 crore.

The investigation relates to allegations of ''a massive scam in which illegal levy of Rs 25 was being extorted for every tonne of coal transported in Chhattisgarh by a cartel involving senior bureaucrats, businessmen, politicians and middlemen'', the agency had earlier said.

Nine people, including Chaurasia, Suryakant Tiwari, his uncle Laxmikant Tiwari and Chhattisgarh-cadre IAS officer Sameer Vishnoi, have been arrested till now in the case by the ED. They are in judicial custody at present.

The money laundering case stems from an Income Tax department complaint that was registered following raids by the taxman in June, 2022.

The agency has called Suryakant Tiwari as the ''main henchman'' at the ground-level who deployed his employees in various regions to extort money from coal transporters and industrialists and his team was physically coordinating with lower level government functionaries and coal transporters and representatives of user companies.

''Since his employees were spread across the state, they maintained WhatsApp groups, excel sheets of each coal delivery order and the extorted amounts and shared them with Suryakant Tiwari, who in turn maintained detailed hand written diaries of the incoming bribe amounts and their utilisation for purchase of benami lands, payment of bribes, payments for political expenditure etc.''

''This kind of systemic extortion was not possible without the knowledge and active participation of the state machinery,'' the ED had said.

The agency has filed two charge sheets and has claimed to have ''established proceeds of crime worth Rs 540 crore in this extortion racket.''