Maharashtra: ED files money laundering case to probe irregularities in PMAY scheme

Enforcement Directorate (ED) seized incriminating documents after it recently carried out raids in Maharashtra as part of a money laundering investigation into alleged irregularities in the tender allocation of the Pradhan Mantri Aawas Yojana (PMAY) scheme in Aurangabad district of the state. A total of nine locations in Aurangabad, Pune and Akola were searched by the federal probe agency.

The money laundering case stems from a state police FIR which was filed by the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation against firms like Samarath Construction & JV, Indo Global Infrastructure Services, Jaguar Global Services and their respective partners, for forgery and formation of a cartel to illegally win the tender of the municipal body for constructing 40,000 PMAY houses at Aurangabad, the ED said in a statement.

The PMAY scheme was to be implemented at seven plots/sites in Aurangabad. It was found that all the three e-tenders were uploaded from a single IP address. The FIR was registered after the PMAY regulators identified the anomaly that the winning firm was not at all financially capable of implementing such a big project, the agency said.

Probe found, the ED said, that three firms applied for the e-tender from the same IP address. Tender was allotted to Samarath Construction & JV, but out of the performance bank guarantee of Rs 46.24 crore they had deposited bank guarantee of only Rs 88.60 lakh, the ED found.

Samarath Construction & JV subverted the due procedure by getting the extension of the initial tender for 19.22 hectares to 120 hectares without a fresh tender process, the agency alleged. The amount of government subsidy involved in this scam is to the tune of around Rs 1,000 crore, it said.