The Enforcement Directorate (ED) Mumbai has seized assets to the tune of ₹ 333.82 crore as part of a money laundering case under the Dnyanradha Multistate Cooperative Credit Society Ltd (DMCSL) fraud allegedly committed.
The assets seized on Tuesday include land and buildings, as well as plant machinery of two dairy-related companies operating in Satara and Ahmednagar districts, respectively. This latest action has taken seizure attachment and freezing orders in the DMCSL case to ₹1,433.48 crore.
ED’s probe found that a loan amount of ₹ 2,467.89 crore was allegedly siphoned off from DMCSL by individuals like Suresh Kute and Yashvant Kulkarni. These funds, according to the ED, are “proceeds of crime” and were allegedly diverted to other entities within the Kute Group, which Kute and his wife own.
More than four lakh investors are said to have been lured with the deposit schemes and attractive returns between 12% and 14%. However, at the same time as the maturity of these deposits, many investors received little or no return on their investments.
As taken in the ED, Kute and his associates are said to have devised a means whereby cooperative society funds were siphoned into loans for The Kute Group. After the disbursement of the loans, the money was transferred to other accounts connected with the Kute Group entities or was cashed. It is asserted that these funds were used for personal gains, such as buying immovable properties and other business ventures, as well as for personal uses.
The ED has been very busy carrying out searches and releasing attachments associated with this case. During the enforcement actions by the ED on August 9, September 20, and October 14 this year, ₹10.99 crore of movable assets were frozen and seized.
The same holds prior previous provisional attachment orders of ₹ 85.88 crore on September 24 and ₹1,002.79 crore on October 9. This probe was set in motion by several complaints lodged.
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