ED files complaint against jewellery firm promoter, his son in bank fraud case

The Enforcement Directorate ED has filed a prosecution complaint in Nagpur court against three jewellery firms and their promoters including former MP Ishwarlal Jain and his son and former MLC Manish Jain in connection with a multicrore bank fraud caseAccording to the PTI report the central probe agency filed the prosecution complaint on July 26 before a special court in Nagpur hearing cases related to the Prevention of Money Laundering Act PMLAAccording to the statement from ED on Monday the court has taken cognisance of the prosecution complaintThe prosecution complaint is against three jewellery firms Rajmal Lakhichand Jewelers Pvt Ltd R L Gold Pvt Ltd and Manraj Jewelers Pvt Ltd and their promotersdirectorsguarantors Ishwarlal Jain Manish Jain and others reported PTIIshwarlal Jain is a former treasurer of the undivided Nationalist Congress Party NCP and close aide of NCP SP chief Sharad Pawar He is also a former Rajya Sabha member while his son Manish Jain was a member of the Maharashtra legislative councilThe ED reportedly initiated the investigation on the basis of three FIRs registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation CBIAs per the FIR the jewellery firms and their directorspromoters were involved in the offences of criminal conspiracy cheating forgery and criminal misconduct They had purposefully stopped making payments on their loans and borrowings from the State Bank of India SBI causing a loss of Rs 35249 crore plus interest to the bank reported PTIThe ED said that as per its investigation the promoters had submitted fake financials to avail themselves of the loans In cooperation with the companies auditors they allegedly roundtripped transactions to inflate the financials and logged bogus sale and purchase transactions in the books of accounts of the firms to divert loan proceeds for real estate investments read the statement according to PTIAccording to the PTI report it was also discovered that the promoters had deceitfully alienated and sold off parts of the mortgaged properties against these loans without the banks approval According to the ED they destroyed documents that could have implicated the accused companies in order to prevent any scrutiny of the utilisation of the loan proceedsLast year the ED reportedly conducted search operations at 13 official and residential premises of the Rajmal Lakhichand Group in Jalgaon Nashik and Thane in Maharashtra and seized gold silver and diamond jewellerybullion worth Rs 2436 crore and cash of Rs 1121 crore along with various incriminating documentsAccording to the news agency report search and postsearch investigative findings revealed fictitious stockmissing stock inventories of bullion and gold jewellery in books use of shell companies employment of dummy directors it saidThe ED provisionally attached movable and immovable assets valued at Rs 31560 crore in October last year The attached assets include benami properties acquired by the Jains the central agency said reported PTIWith inputs from PTI