New Delhi: In what could spell trouble for superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s wife Gauri Khan and actress Juhi Chawla’s husband Jay Mehta, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has attached Rs 70 crore bank accounts of Knight Riders Sports (KRSPL) and St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata, and others in connection with the Rs 17,520 crore Rose Valley chit fund scam probe.
With the recent attachment, value of properties seized in the Rose Valley Group cases has reached around Rs 4,750 crore.
St. Xaviers College and KRSPL had received payments from the bank accounts of the Rose Valley Group, an ED official said.
Besides Gauri and Mehta, Venky Mysore is also one of the directors of KRSPL. Mysore is also the CEO of the IPL team Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), owned by Red Chillies Entertainment and promoted by Shah Rukh Khan.
In October 2019, the ED questioned Mysore as the Rose Valley Group had sponsored the IPL team for two years. It had also questioned SRK in 2015 in connection with the alleged Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) violations in selling around five million KRSPL shares at an undervalued rate to Mehta.
During the ED and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the Rose Valley Group scam, several prominent Trinamool Congress (TMC) leaders, including Sudip Bandopadhyay (MP) and Tapas Pal (MLA) have been interrogated, arrested and jailed. Bandopadhyay and Pal are on bail.
The ED has also questioned many Bengali movie personalities, like Rituparna Sengupta and Prosenjit Chatterjee for acting in films funded by Gautam Kundu, the promoter and director of Rose Valley Group. Kundu, arrested in March 2015, is in judicial custody.
The ED had registered a money laundering case in 2014 on the basis of FIR filed by the West Bengal Police and the CBI against the Rose Valley Group of Companies. The Rose Valley ponzi scheme was unearthed in 2013.
The group allegedly floated 27 companies to run various schemes and collected Rs 17,520 crore from depositors in West Bengal, Assam and Bihar by luring them to deposit funds on the false promise of high return/interest. Of this, Rs 10,850 crore was refunded. The remaining Rs 6,670 crore is unpaid, which constitutes the proceeds of crime.
Earlier the ED had identified and attached under the PMLA Rs 4,680 crore properties, which included several luxurious resorts, hotels, vehicles, flats, lands, gold and jewellery.
The ED has filed multiple chargesheets in the courts in Kolkata and Bhubaneswar in this case.
PNN & Agencies
