ED attaches ex-chief engineer’s properties

YADAV SINGH WAS ARRESTED LAST YEAR

THE ENFORCEMENT Directorate (ED) Monday attached properties worth about Rs 20 crore belonging to former Uttar Pradesh chief engineer Yadav Singh and his associates under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

Singh, known to be a close aide of Mulayam Singh Yadav, was arrested in February 2016 by the CBI for allegedly “abusing his official position in awarding contracts and causing wrongful loss to the government exchequer”.

The ED Monday said it has issued orders to freeze assets and properties of three construction companies and a firm allegedly owned by Singh’s wife. “The total value of seized assets is around Rs 19.42 crore,” it said.

After an Allahabad High Court order, the CBI registered two cases against Singh and his family members for alleged corruption and for amassing assets disproportionate to known sources of income. The CBI has also filed a chargesheet in one of the two cases.

The ED had slapped money laundering charges against Singh in two separate cases in 2015, based on an FIR by the CBI.

Singh’s case had come to light after the Income Tax department first carried out searches against him and others on tax evasion charges. A scrutiny of ITRS have reportedly revealed that between 2009 and 2014, the total likely savings of the family of the then chief engineer was approximately Rs 1.70 crore, whereas they were in possession of immovable property worth around Rs 3.60 crore, CBI had said.

In November 2014, Income Tax officials raided Singh’s wife’s home and found jewellery worth Rs 78 lakh and seized about 2 kg of “unexplained” gold jewellery worth Rs 53.40 lakh.

The CBI’S chargesheet filed in March last year says Yadav Singh, chief engineer of Noida, Greater Noida and Yamuna Expressway, had in December 2011 taken bribes to grant contracts worth Rs 92.02 crore for underground electrical cables to three firms JSP Constructions, NKG Infrastructure and Tirupati Constructions. The agency is probing the allotment of 1,280 projects worth Rs 959 crore and other instances of corruption.

The CBI chargesheet says tenders for cabling work were opened in March 2011 and awarded to JSP Constructions (Rs 21.99 crore) and Tirupati Constructions (Rs 25.53 crore). But well before the contracts were awarded to them in December 2011, the firms had completed 60 per cent of the work.

During the probe, CBI had come across properties worth several hundred crores in the name of Singh and his family members. The agency had conducted 14 raids between August and October in 2015, and found documents related to 39 properties in the name of Singh and his family members, sources said. These not only include residential premises but even agricultural land, companies and factories. It also found investments made by Singh’s family members in seven companies, sources said.

In September 2016, an investigation by The Indian Express revealed that the family of SP Rajya Sabha member Ram Gopal Yadav, cousin of party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and uncle of Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, got a deal from Yadav Singh via an aide.

Yadav Singh