Note ban: ED attaches Rs 41.65 cr assets of lawyer, bank manager

NEW DELHI: The ED on Monday attached assets worth Rs 41.65 crore, deposited as bank demand drafts, as part of its money laundering probe registered post-demonetisation against Delhi-based lawyer Rohit Tandon and suspended Kotak Bank branch manager Ashish Kumar. The agency issued a provisional attachment order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), terming the money in the form of demand drafts (DDS) as the “proceeds of crime” of the illegal exchange of old notes of Rs 500 and 1000 by the accused. The agency said it issued the orders attaching multiple DDS in the name and “attributed” to Tandon and Kumar, which were kept frozen in the custody of the Income Tax department. The I-T department too is probing this case for charges of alleged black money generation and tax evasion. Both Tandon and Kumar, along with an alleged entry operator R K Goel, were arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in this case last year and they are at present in judicial custody.

The ED alleged the accused “conspired so that demonetised currency would be collected and deposited in various accounts of the firms (fake) which have huge cash in hand and from those accounts demand drafts in fictitious names would be issued. “Later these DDS would be cancelled to get the money back into the accounts thus converting the demonetised currency into the monetised currency,” it said.