Chandigarh, July 7 Cracking the whip against a tainted retired bureaucrat, the ED provisionally attached nine properties, including two houses and seven apartments located in Chandigarh, New Delhi and Gurgaon, linked to M.L. Tayal, who earlier served as Principal Secretary to former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
The Enforcement Directorate's action under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act 2002 also led to the attachment of bank balances of Rs 14.06 crore on June 30.
Tayal, a retired Indian Administrative Service officer, and others are facing the ED probe in a matter of disproportionate assets. He served in the Haryana CMO from March 6, 2005, to October 31, 2009.
Tayal had earlier also served as a member of the Competition Commission of India from November 30, 2009, to December 31, 2014.
During the check period from January 1, 2006, to December 31, 2014, Tayal and his family members had allegedly amassed assets disproportionate to their known sources of income.
Pursuant to this, the ED conducted an investigation into the financial affairs, income tax records and stock market dealings of Tayal, Savita Tayal and Kartik Tayal.
The ED investigation revealed that during the check period of eight years, the accused had acquired disproportionate assets worth Rs 14.06 crore using proceeds of crime generated through illegal gratification.
In a separate action by the Chandigarh zonal office, the ED carried out search operations on July 4 at the premises of three suspected shell companies -- Kindent Business Solutions Pvt Ltd, Rainet Technology Pvt Ltd and Mool Business Solutions Pvt Ltd, located in Noida and Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.
During the search operations, various incriminating documents, digital devices and electronic records were seized, 116 accounts in several banks associated with these entities were also frozen.
Till now, 16 bank accounts with more than Rs103 crore have been restrained, said an ED statement.
The agency said that the companies were being operated by dummy directors and were posing as IT firms offering wallet-based APIs, domestic money transfers (DMT), Aadhaar-enabled payment systems (AEPS) and bill payment solutions.
The company’s management could not substantiate that the activities carried out by them are within the framework regulated by the RBI.
It was then found that these companies were actually fronts for laundering proceeds of crime (POC) generated through the multi-crore QFX/YFX online forex and MLM (Multi Level Marketing) scam, which duped thousands of investors across India.
Each office employed 10-30 staff, many of whom admitted that no real work was taking place and that they were often unaware of the company’s actual activities.
The firms claimed to have a nationwide client base, but the ED has found evidence suggesting that many such clients are fictitious and exist only on paper.
Payments running into crores of rupees were being received in the names of QFX, YFX, YORKERF, TLC Coin, and BotBro, all of which are entities under investigation in a massive unregulated deposit and MLM fraud.
Directors of the companies have denied any connection with these scam-related names and the credits being received in their bank accounts, raising further suspicion about benami operations and money laundering layering activity, the ED said.
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