New Delhi: A special court in Delhi on Monday convicted a former chairman-cum-managing director (CMD) of Odisha-based PSU National Aluminium Company Ltd (Nalco), his wife and two others under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA)-2002.
Those convicted are former Nalco CMD Abhay Kumar Srivastava, his wife Chandni Srivastava, aide Bhushan Lal Bajaj and Lal’s wife Anita Bajaj.
According to the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Srivastava had accepted illicit payments through Bajaj in connection with a coal supply tender floated by Nalco. The bribe money was converted into gold bars and concealed in a benami locker.
“The court acknowledged the sophisticated modus operandi adopted by the accused. The laundering process included the use of a benami bank locker in the name of Anita Bajaj, which was opened and operated by Chandni Srivastava using forged identification documents and impersonation. The court accepted the statutory presumption that the proceeds of crime were involved in money laundering and that the burden to prove otherwise was not discharged by the accused,” the ED said in a release.
The case dates back to 2011 when the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested Srivastava, his wife and the Bajajs in connection with irregularities and bribery related to a tender floated for the purchase of 2 lakh tonnes of wash coal from Nalco’s captive power plant unit at Angul.
At the time of the CBI raid, Chandni had just deposited the three gold bricks in a bank locker of Bank of Maharashtra, New Delhi. The locker had been opened using forged documents and operated under impersonation in the name of Anita Bajaj. Seven more gold bricks of 1 kg each, golden ornaments weighing 188 grams and Rs 9.5 lakh, were recovered from the locker during subsequent searches.
Later, the ED attached assets worth Rs 2.23 crore under PMLA and filed a prosecution complaint in March 2015. It was not necessary for the ED to separately prove the conversion of bribe amounts into gold bars, as the recovery of the gold bars itself constituted evidence of money laundering.
All four accused were earlier convicted of the scheduled offence.
