New Delhi: The ED said on Friday that it has attached assets worth Rs 6.3 crore in the Saradha money laundering case. The owners of the property include Nalini Chidambaram, wife of former finance minister P Chidambaram.
The ED said movable assets worth Rs 3.3 crore and assets worth more than Rs 3 crore have been attached in the ongoing probe against Saradha group companies. The agency said these properties were owned by the Saradha Group and other persons who were the beneficiaries of the proceeds of crime.
The agency claimed, “Beneficiaries include Anubhuti Printers and Publications owned by Nalini Chidambaram, Debabrata Sarkar, Debendranath Biswas (former IPS and former MLA from CPM) and late Anjan Dutta, former minister in Assam.”
Nalini’s links with Saradha Group chief Sudipta Sen and Manoranjana Singh, wife of former Union minister Matang Singh, were probed by the ED over the past decade. When the UPA was in power, Sen appointed Nalini as an advisor to advise his group companies on some pending matters related to financial regulators.
Sen, in a letter to the CBI, had said that he was forced to invest heavily in media ventures in the Northeast. The ED is probing Nalini’s involvement with these media groups.
A money laundering probe was launched against the Saradha Group in 2013 after it was found to have defrauded lakhs of small investors through its chit fund scam with its operations spread across West Bengal, Assam and Orissa.