ED attaches Rs 94 lakh assets of Gujarat IAS officer

Enforcement Directorate (ED) has issued fresh orders attaching over Rs 94 lakh assets of suspended Gujarat-cadre IAS officer Pradeep Sharma in connection with a money laundering case.
The agency said it has seized two properties, a house in Gandhinagar and a land in Degham in the same district, under the provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and the total value of the properties is Rs 94.67 lakh.
The ED had earlier attached assets worth Rs 28 lakh of Sharma in 2014 and with the latest order the total value of attachments against him under PMLA stand at Rs 1.22 crore.

An attachment order under PMLA is aimed to deprive the accussed from obtaining benefits of their ill-gotten wealth and the order can be appealed before the Adjudicating Authority of the said Act within 180 days of the first order.
The 1994-batch officer was arrested by ED on July 31 this year and at present he is lodged in Sabarmati jail in Ahmedabad.
He was arrested after the Supreme Court had vacated an interim stay on his arrest after the ED filed an affidavit seeking to do so.

The ED case against him pertains to sanction of government land in Bhuj for industrial use to Ms Welspun India Limited, and its group companies, Welspun Power and Steel and Welspun Gujarat Style Roharan, in 2004, when Sharma was the District Collector and Chairman of the District Land Evaluation and Pricing Committee.

Through this allotment, Sharma, in connivance with some
others "has allegedly caused financial losses to the state government to the tune of Rs 1.20 crore (approx)", the agency had said.
"Against this favour, he has received gain to the tune of Rs 22 lakh in the name of his wife Shyamal P Sharma within a short period of 15 months by just investing Rs one lakh (in January 2008) in one Ms Value Packaging," the ED probe report had said.
ED invoked PMLA alleging that the money was first deposited in his wife's overseas bank account and then transferred to his account in violation of the Act.

The CID had arrested Sharma in this case and he had later got bail.
The ED suspects that Sharma is the beneficiary of an alleged undisclosed Swiss bank account. It has attached Sharma's assets worth Rs 75 lakh in this case.
Sharma had earlier filed a petition in the Supreme Courtalleging that he was being victimised by the then Narendra Modi government in Gujarat and had sought a CBI inquiry into the cases against him. However, the Supreme Court had rejected his application.