A Beechcraft plane, flats and properties in Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh — worth more than Rs 29 crore of the Alchemist Group, which is headed by former TMC MP K D Singh, have been attached under the anti-money laundering law, the ED said Saturday.
The probe pertains to a clutch of FIRs registered by the CBI, Uttar Pradesh Police and West Bengal Police on charges that the group collected funds worth more than Rs 1,800 crore from general public in its companies like Alchemist Holdings Limited and Alchemist Township India Limited on the "false promise" of providing high returns and giving flats, villas, plots apart from high rate of interest on their investments.
The properties have been attached provisionally under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and they include a Beechcraft King Air C90A aircraft, flats and land in Shimla and Sirmaur districts of Himachal Pradesh and Katni district in Madhya Pradesh, the ED said in a statement.
A total of 18 flats which were purchased by Alchemist Realty Ltd in the Parsvnath Royale Project in Panchkula, Haryana, and land measuring around 250 bighas and 78 bighas at Keonthal in Shimla (rural) and Sirmaur have also been attached, the agency said.
The Alchemist Group is headed by Kanwar Deep Singh, a former Rajya Sabha member of the Trinamool Congress (TMC). The total value of the attached properties is Rs 29.45 crore.
The ED claimed that as per probe, the public investors were never returned their money and the funds were "siphoned off and diverted" to various companies of the Alchemist Group.
The Alchemist Group had floated a number of companies in various fields for acquiring properties out of the proceeds of crime it acquired from the investors on false promises, it alleged.
"Huge parcels of land were purchased by the Alchemist Group in the name of third parties to camouflage and mask the real ownership of such properties," the central probe agency said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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