Partha Chatterjee made huge cash through illegal activities, hid it in Arpita Mukherjee's house: ED
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has said that former West Bengal minister Partha Chatterjee, who is an accused in the teachers recruitment scam case, acquired a huge amount of cash through illegal activities.
On Monday, the ED filed its first chargesheet against Partha Chatterjee and his alleged associate Arpita Mukherjee in the School Service Commission (SSC) recruitment scam.
The ED chargesheet stated that apart from making money in the SSC scam, Partha Chatterjee also made huge money through other illegal activities and scams. He concealed this money in the premises in the name of Arpita Mukherjee, out of which Rs 49.8 crores was recovered and seized from the two premises in Kolkata.
Arpita Mukherjee had confessed to the ED that the cash recovered from her premises belonged to Partha Chatterjee.
The ED chargesheet says that Partha Chatterjee exploited underprivileged people and made them dummy directors of shell companies without their consent or knowledge.
"The said companies were floated with the sole aim of laundering the tainted funds acquired from the criminal activity of selling jobs in lieu of money," the chargesheet says.
A company controlled by Partha Chatterjee, Ananta Texfab, was registered on the same address from where the ED recovered Rs 27.90 crore in cash and gold worth Rs 4.31 crore.
Partha Chatterjee had installed dummy directors in the companies under his control, namely - Ananta Texfab Pvt Ltd, Symbiosis Merchants Pvt Ltd, Viewmore Highrise Pvt Ltd.
Firms linked to Arpita Mukherjee -- Sentry engineering Pvt Ltd and Echhay Entertainment pvt. Ltd -- were used for the purpose of laundering funds by way of depositing the cash in the accounts maintained in the name of companies and subsequently purchasing immovable properties in the name of the companies.
The ED has also recorded statements of people who paid money to get a job but few of them were not even given a job after paying money.
