The Economic Offences Wing of the Mumbai Police has given a clean chit to Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, his wife Sunetra Pawar and nephew Rohit Pawar in an alleged money-laundering scam involving the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank, reported The Indian Express on Wednesday.
The case pertains to allegations that officials at the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank fraudulently doled out loans to the owners of cooperative sugar factories, their relatives or other persons without following due procedure.
In July, Ajit Pawar, along with several party MLAs, joined Maharashtra’s coalition government comprising the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shiv Sena faction led by Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. Ajit Pawar then became the deputy chief minister.
The move led to a split in the Nationalist Congress Party, with one faction supporting Sharad Pawar and the other backing Ajit Pawar, who is fighting the Lok Sabha elections in
After the businesses were declared as non-performing assets, they were allegedly sold to people linked to the directors of the bank at throwaway prices.
The agency filed its closure report in January but its details were made available only on Tuesday, according to The Indian Express.
The report said that the public-sector bank did not incur any losses due to the alleged irregularities and that it had so far recovered Rs 1,343.41 crore of the total amount of fraudulent loans granted by the bank.
The Economic Offences Wing has relied on its assessment of two transactions to conclude the absence of any criminal offence by the Pawars.
The first transaction is the sale of a former sugar factory in Satara known as Jarandeshwar Sugar Sahakari Karkhana, which the Enforcement Directorate said was sold for Rs 65 crore – far below the market price – in 2010 to Guru Commodity Service Limited.
The transaction was carried out after the company had taken loans from cooperative banks, including the Pune District Central Cooperative Bank where Ajit Pawar was a director.
It has been alleged that Ajit Pawar’s wife Sunetra, who is contesting the Baramati Lok Sabha seat on a Nationalist Congress Party ticket, was involved in the throwaway sale of Jarandeshwar Sugar Sahakari Karkhana through her role as the director of a company called Jay Agrotech.
However, the Economic Offences Wing’s report claims Sunetra was not linked to Jay Agrotech at the time of the sugar factory’s sale.
The other transaction is linked to the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) MLA from Karjat-Jamkhed Rohit Pawar, who owns the company Baramati Agro Limited. The Enforcement Directorate has alleged that Baramati Agro, in 2012, purchased the Kannad Sahakari Sakhar Karkhana Limited sugar mill through cooperative bank loans that were taken for purposes of working capital.
It has also been alleged that Baramati Agro Limited may have connived with a firm named Hitech Engineering to bid for Kannad Sahakari Sakhar Karkhana Limited and to win the auction through manipulation.
The Enforcement Directorate claimed that the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank, in order to recover an outstanding loan of Kannad Sahakari Sakhar Karkhana Limited, took possession of all its assets under the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act.
However, the Economic Offences Wing has concluded that the sale of Kannad Sahakari Sakhar Karkhana Limited was legal.
The closure report, if accepted, will prevent the Enforcement Directorate from investigating the alleged scam. Under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, the Enforcement Directorate can investigate money laundering allegations only when a case has been registered by another investigative agency. The original case is called a scheduled offence or a predicate offence.
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