The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has attached assets worth ₹2,747.69 crore in the ABG Shipyard Limited money laundering case.
"The attached assets include Shipyard at Surat and Dahej located in Gujarat, agricultural lands and plots, various commercial and residential premises in Gujarat and Maharashtra and bank accounts owned by ABG Shipyard Ltd, its group companies and other related entities," the ED stated in an official statement to the media.
The move comes a day after the CBI arrested ABG Shipyard founder Rishi Kamlesh Agarwal after he was not cooperating during his interrogation, the agency officials had stated. The ED's money laundering investigation is based on the CBI FIR registered in February 2022, against ABG Shipyard, former chairman Agarwal, the then executive director Santhanam Muthaswamy, and directors Ashwini Kumar, Sushil Kumar Agarwal and Ravi Vimal Nevetia.
The ED probe has revealed that ABG Shipyard and its former chairman Agarwal availed various credit facilities/loans from consortium of banks led by ICICI Bank, Mumbai on pretext of meeting its capital requirements and other business expenses but they allegedly misappropriated the availed credit facilities and diverted the funds in the garb of various loans/advances/investments to various entities incorporated in India and abroad. That eventually caused monetary loss of ₹22,842 crore to the consortium of banks, pointed out the ED.
The ED said it "has traced movable and immovable assets totaling ₹2,747.69 crore belonging to ABG Shipyard Ltd., its group companies, Bermaco Energy Systems Ltd., Dhananjay Datar, Savita Dhananjay Datar, Krishna Gopal Toshniwal, Viren Ahuja and attached them under the provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002" .