₹145 crore FD scam came to light, ED raided many locations, money was deposited in this bank

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) said on Thursday that it has raided several places in connection with an alleged scam of about Rs 145 crore related to the fixed deposit (FD) of Panchkula Municipal Corporation of Haryana. This action has been taken under money laundering. According to PTI news, apart from Chandigarh and Panchkula (Haryana), about a dozen locations including Zirakpur, Derabassi in Punjab and Rajpura in Patiala district were included in the raids conducted on Wednesday.

The locations of these people were searched

During the raid, ED searched the locations of former Deputy Vice President of the bank Pushpendra Singh, former Customer Relations Manager of the branch Dilip Kumar Raghav, former Senior Accounts Officer of Municipal Corporation Vikas Kaushik and many others. The agency has said that many objectionable documents have been recovered during this period. In this case, Haryana ACB has already arrested six people including Pushpendra Singh, Dilip Raghav.

Criminal conspiracy exposed

According to ED, initial investigation has revealed a criminal conspiracy between municipal corporation officials, bank employees and some private individuals, under which government funds were siphoned off. Investigation has revealed that Dilip Raghav and Pushpendra Singh, with the help of Vikas Kaushik, opened two bank accounts in the name of Panchkula Municipal Corporation on the basis of fake and forged documents. After this, money from genuine accounts was transferred to these unauthorized accounts through fake permission letters.

These transactions are approved using fake email IDs

Bank officials approved these transactions using fake email IDs. According to the ED, the money transferred to these accounts was later sent to some financiers – Rajat Dahda, Swati Tomar, Kapil Kumar and Vinod Kumar. The agency alleges that this money was later returned to Pushpendra Singh and his wife Preeti Thakur. Some amount was also transferred to real estate companies and other private individuals. Apart from this, the accused also gave 16 fake fixed deposit receipts to the Municipal Corporation, which showed investments of Rs 145.03 crore and maturity value of Rs 158.02 crore.