On Wednesday, the Enforcement Directorate submitted a chargesheet against the Maharashtra State Cooperative (MSC) Bank, in which it had earlier attached the properties of a sugar mill linked to NCP leader and Maharashtra’s former Deputy Chief Minister, Ajit Pawar and his wife Sunetra Pawar, to a court dealing with money laundering cases.
However, according to the reports, Ajit Pawar and his wife Sunetra’s names have been dropped from the ED chargesheet but names of some companies, which came up while probing the MSC Bank scam, have been retained. The matter is listed for hearing on April 19.
MSC bank scam case | Enforcement Directorate has submitted a chargesheet in the case, in which it has named a company linked to former Maharashtra Deputy CM & NCP leader Ajit Pawar and his wife, while Pawar and his wife have not been named in the chargesheet. The ED had attached…
— ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2023
In July 2021, the Enforcement Directorate revealed that, in a case involving the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank, it had attached assets such as land, a building, equipment, and machinery worth over Rs 65 crore (purchase price in 2010) of Jarandeshwar Sahkari Sugar Mill, which is situated in Koregaon in Maharashtra’s Satara district. The assets were leased to Jarandeshwar Sugar Mills Pvt Ltd by Guru Commodity Services Pvt Ltd.
During its investigation, the ED discovered that Sparkling Soil Pvt Ltd, a business connected to Ajit Pawar and his wife Sunetra, owned the bulk of the shares in Jarandeshwar Sugar Mills. The ED’s first such step in the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank scandal, in which the bank is alleged to have fraudulently issued loans of Rs 25,000 crore, was the seizure of the Jarandeshwar Sugar Mill in Satara.
The MSC Bank scandal came to light after a PIL was filed in the Bombay HC by four petitioners. The petitioners said that several sugar mills failed to make payments on loans totaling crores, and that banks had seized the mills and sold most of them at auction to various officials, including prominent politicians.
One of the bank’s directors, Ajit Pawar, bought a few mills during the auction. The Economic Offenses Wing then conducted an investigation after the Bombay High Court ordered to file a FIR.
The ED then submitted an intervention in opposition to the closure report that the EOW had filed before the Mumbai Sessions Court in 2020. Additionally, protest petitions were submitted by petitioners in opposition to the closure report.
According to the central investigation agency’s investigations, Guru Commodity Services Pvt Ltd was a fictitious business used to purchase Sparkling Soil Pvt Ltd, while the sugar mill was truly owned and operated by the Jarandeshwar Sugar Mills Pvt. Ltd. “The major part of the funds utilised towards purchase of SSK was received from Jarandeshwar Sugar Mills Private Limited, which received the same from Sparkling Soil, a company related to Ajit Pawar and his wife,” the ED said in a statement.
Further investigation found that between 2010 and 2021, Jarandeshwar Sugar Mills utilised Sparkling Soil Pvt Ltd as a means of acquiring loans totalling almost Rs 700 crore from the Pune District Central Co-operative Bank and other financial institutions.
