The ED in a statement said it has attached movable as well as immovable assets totaling Rs 4.53 crore belonging to the accused Raj Kumar Goenka and others under the PMLA, 2002 in a forgery and cheating related money laundering case.
The agency has attached three houses situated at Muzaffarpur in Bihar worth Rs 3.13 crore, Honda Amaze and Mahindra TUV 300 vehicles worth Rs 18.57 lakh and available balances in various bank accounts held in the name of Goenka and his family members to the tune of Rs 23.34 lakh and life insurance policies in the name of Goenka and his family members to the tune of Rs 98 lakh.
The ED has filed the case on the basis of a complaint from the Income Tax Department.
The IT sleuths had carried out searches at Puja Trading Company, Puja Jewellery and Kanta Sales Corporation, belonging to jewellers Ashok Kumar Goenka and Raj Kumar Goenka, in Purani Gudri area under Mithanpura police station of Muzaffarpur in December 2016.
They found that the Goenka brothers fraudulently opened bank accounts of their employees by misusing their KYC.
"These Bank accounts were used to transfer Proceeds of Crime (PoC) to the account of shell companies with a view to launder the money," the ED said.
The financial probe agency said that during investigation, it was revealed that the accused opened many bank accounts fraudulently in the name of his family members and in the name of employees, where illegal and unaccounted cash was deposited without any genuine source of income.
The ED claimed that the proceeds of crime placed in these bank accounts were claimed as business income from the firms Kanta Sales Corporation, Pooja Trading Company, Pooja Jewellers and Manish jewelers though no real business has been carried out by these firms.
"No record relating to business operations by these firms could be produced during investigation. It was also revealed that IT returns declaring business income was filed regularly to cover up the proceeds of crime," sources said.
"Even the IT returns in the name of school going children with fraudulently obtained PAN were filed to disguise the proceeds of crime as business income," the sources said.
( With inputs from IANS )