The Enforcement Directorate on Monday (11th March) provisionally attached Rs 10.29 crore from the Trinamool Congress (TMC) as a demand draft tendered during the probe into a suspected money laundering scam involving ex-TMC MP Kanwar Deep Singh and his company Alchemist Group and a few others. Singh was elected to Rajya Sabha in April 2014 on a Trinamool Congress ticket.
The ED investigation found that Alchemist Group utilized some of the money received by defrauding the public to make payments to aviation firms on behalf of the Trinamool Congress Party.
ED, Delhi Zonal Office has provisionally attached an amount of Rs. 10.29 Crore of All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) party in the form of a Demand Draft tendered by it during the investigation into the offence of money laundering by Alchemist Group & others.
— ED (@dir_ed) March 11, 2024
“The ED investigation has revealed that an amount of Rs 10.29 crore was paid by Alchemist Airways Pvt Ltd to various aviation/helicopter companies for the aviation services availed by All India Trinamool Congress during the campaigning for 2014 Lok Sabha elections for its star campaigners such as West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, former Union Railway Minister Mukul Roy, Munmun Sen, MP Nusrat Jahan, and others,” an ED spokesperson said on Monday.
The ED launched an investigation into the Alchemist Group’s affairs in 2016 based on FIRs filed by Kolkata Police against Singh, his son Karandeep Singh, M/s Alchemist Township India Limited, M/s Alchemist Holdings Limited, and various other group companies and their directors for allegedly defrauding thousands of customers and investors.
In January 2021, ED had arrested the former TMC MP Kanwar Deep Singh, also a promoter of the beleaguered Tehelka magazine, in connection with the money laundering case. A criminal case was filed against him under the PMLA, based on a charge sheet lodged against the company, its directors and others by the market watchdog SEBI.
The ED stated in a January 2019 statement that money obtained from Alchemist Infra Realty Ltd’s criminal activity was routed through a web of shell companies.
The investigation additionally discovered that the money that the corporations had raised from different investors was never put to use for the intended purpose and instead ended up in the bank accounts of other businesses that were essentially shell companies. The ED stated that the money that was syphoned off was thereafter utilised to purchase real estate in different parts of India.
“The ED investigation revealed that M/s Alchemist Group collected funds amounting to more than Rs 1,800 crore from victims in its companies namely, M/s Alchemist Holdings Limited and M/s Alchemist Township India Limited on false promises of providing high returns and giving flats or villas high rate of interest on the investments to the victims. However, the investors were never given their money and the funds were siphoned off to various group companies of the Alchemist Group,” the ED spokesperson said.
In September 2019, the Enforcement Directorate carried out searches at the premises linked to KD Singh in New Delhi and Chandigarh. The searches were in connection with the companies related to and controlled by the former MP.
Ex-TMC MP KD Singh’s connection with beleaguered Tehelka magazine
It is noteworthy to mention that KD Singh was also associated with Tehelka magazine, whose editor-in-chief Tarun Tejpal is mired in a sexual assault case. The case had come to fore in 2013 when one of the staffers of the organisations had levelled allegations of rape against Tejpal.
A year after the sexual assault allegations were levelled against Tarun Tejpal, KD Singh, in an interview with the Quartz in December 2014 said that he owned 70-80 per cent of the shares and reposed his faith in the magazine, stating that the firm can make a comeback and do the stories that it was known to pursue.
