BackED attaches ₹205 cr in assets of ex-Tamilnad Mercantile Bank chairman, others
The company had filed a writ petition against ED proceedings in the Madras High Court in October and obtained an interim stay on ED proceedings.
PremiumNEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has attached assets worth ₹205.36 crore of MGM Maran and MGM Anand and their Chennai-based company Southern Agrifurane Industries Pvt Ltd in connection with a prevention of money laundering case.
The probe agency said that MGM Maran was the chairman of Tamilnad Mercantile Bank Ltd. (TMBL) in 2007 when he along with other directors of the TMBL had facilitated a deal of sale of 23.60% shares of TMB from Indian shareholders to unauthorised overseas persons.
It was also found that Maran acquired undisclosed foreign investments of ₹293.91 crore outside India during the same period. These investments were without the approval of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) as well as from unexplained and dubious sources.
“In order to escape the reach of Indian laws, the agency said, MGM Maran surrendered his Indian citizenship and obtained Cyprus’s citizenship. Not only that, it was also found that Maran started transferring his wealth from India to overseas in order to keep the same out of reach of the Indian Law Enforcement Agencies in the garb of Overseas Direct Investments from the Indian company — Southern Agrifurane Industries. On the complaint of AD Bank and Axis Bank, the Central Crime Branch, Chennai (CCB), registered FIR and accordingly ED recorded an enforcement case information report (ECIR)," the agency said.
The company had filed a writ petition against ED proceedings in the Madras High Court in October and obtained an interim stay on ED proceedings. ED in its detailed counter affidavit explained the entire background and facts of the case.
The Madras High Court through a judgement dated 19 December dismissed the writ petition and upheld that the company by making a false declaration has induced the AD Bank to deliver valuable foreign exchange and such remittance in the hands of the wholly-owned subsidiaries of the company, situated outside India, would constitute proceeds of crime, the agency said.
Accordingly, the ED has now provisionally attached proceeds of crime under PMLA as equivalent value in the form of entire shareholding of both Maran and Anand in all prominent MGM Group of companies in India, lands and buildings in Southern Agrifurane Industries Pvt Ltd‘ as well as entire shareholding (3.31%) of Maran in TMBL.
Investigation in the matter is underway.
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