Prosecution plaint filed on Musaddilal
The Directorate of Enforcement (ED) on Tuesday filed a prosecution complaint in the infamous demonetisation scam in which cash of approximately `111 crore was deposited immediately after announcement of the high-denomination currency note ban by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8, 2016.
This deposit was made by the firms of Kailash Gupta, Nitin Gupta and Nikhil Gupta. ED later initiated the money laundering investigation against Musaddilal Gems and Jewels, the Vaishnavi Bullion, the Musaddilal Jewellers and others, on the basis of an FIR registered by the Telangana state police here.
The ED investigations revealed that the accused used the demonetization scheme to bleach its unaccounted black money into white and also to earn a windfall gain. “They blatantly created around 5,911 fictitious sale invoices, attributing fake sales during the short space given between 8 pm and 12 midnight to use the banned currency notes,” the charge-sheet said.
As per the case, the accused men deposited `111 crore in their bank accounts. A major part of the deposited black money belonged to the main accused and his family members and remaining was solicited from others on a commission basis. They used a part of the amount to repay their loans, pay due taxes and kept apart the remaining amount to buy gold (bullion). This gold, investigators said, was further sold at a very high rate to earn even more profits. ED has done an extensive fund trail by way of the investigation and found that the total proceeds of crime generated in this scam was of `139 crore.
A provisional order was issued on February 2 this year, attaching both movable and immovable properties of the accused, worth `130.57 crore, which included jewellery worth Rs86 crore, which had been seized during the searches conducted by the ED.
Two prosecution complaints were filed by the department against 13 individuals/entities. On May 31, ED filed this final prosecution complaint after extensive investigation and has charged the main accused -- Kailash Gupta, Nitin Gupta, Nikhil Gupta and their firms, their chartered accountants, the gold bullion dealers and the major contributors of the black money involved in the fraud.
A total of 41 entities/individuals have been charged with the offence of money laundering. “They knowingly layered the amount into the bank accounts of Musaddilal Group to claim the same as untainted money, then converted the same into gold bullion which was further sold for profit,” as per the case.