Bhubaneswar: The Enforcement Directorate on Saturday attached property of over Rs 3.92 crore belonging to former Cuttack-Choudwar MLA Pravat Biswal in connection with money laundering case.
The Directorate of Enforcement(ED) has provisionally attached movable and immovable assets worth Rs. 3,92,20,000 belonging to Pravat Ranjan Biswal, ex MLA, Cuttack and M/s Media Guru Consultants Private Ltd under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002 in a ponzy scam case.
The central agency, in a statement, said a provisional order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) was issued to attach Rs 25 lakh bank deposits of Pravat Biswal, a three-time former MLA from the Cuttack-Choudwar assembly seat in Odisha, held at the SBI Cuttack branch.
The agency also attached an immovable property belonging to Media Guru Consultants Pvt. Ltd in Noida.
The total value of the attached assets is Rs 3,92,20,000, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) said.
The Seashore Group of companies “fraudulently and dishonestly collected huge amounts from the general public, of which Rs 25 lakh was diverted to the ex-MLA and his family members and Rs 4 crore was diverted to Media Guru Consultants Pvt Ltd to set up a news and current affairs TV channel named STV Samachar,” it alleged.
The money laundering case stems from the FIRs and chargesheets filed against the Seashore Group and its promoters by the Odisha Police’s economic offences wing (EOW) and the CBI.
The ED said this was a “ponzi scam case of fraudulent collection of deposits from the gullible public in guise of issuance of preferential shares by enrolling the depositors as members of cooperative societies.”
“These companies were neither registered as non-banking finance company (NBFC) with the RBI nor listed at the National Stock Exchange and as such were not authorised to collect such public deposits,” the agency said.
The accused companies suddenly closed down business and defaulted in return to depositors after maturity and failed to pay even interest on the deposits despite repeated request and approach of the depositors, it said.
Assets worth Rs 258 crore have been attached earlier by the ED in this case.
