All sugar, spinning mills that laundered money will come under ED scrutiny: Patil

On Thursday, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) provisionally attached land, machinery and buildings worth Rs 65.75 crore owned by the cooperative sugar mill, in a case of alleged fraud related to Maharashtra State Cooperative (MSC) Bank. The ED has alleged that the funds used to purchase the cooperative mill were routed through another sugar mill, which in turn received the money from Sparkling Soil Pvt Ltd, of which Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar and wife Sunetra are majority shareholders.

On Friday, Patil claimed that several cooperative sugar mills were first shown as incurring losses through the Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank and thus confiscated. Later, these factories were auctioned and their assets worth Rs 200 crore were bought at just Rs 15 crore. Again loan worth Rs 300 crore was borrowed from the bank on the same assets.

“These procurements and misappropriation of funds done by nearly 24 sugar factories have come to the notice of the ED. After confiscating the assets of Jarandeshwar Sahkari Sugar Karkhana, the ED has come across the transaction documents and thus the misappropriation came to light. The list of such law-violating factories is long and now all the other factories will also be scrutinised by the investigating agency,” Patil said.

The state BJP chief added that the party will now urge Union Home Minister Amit Shah to set up an inquiry into the alleged embezzlement of hundreds of crores of assets of such cooperative sugar factories.

Rejection the allegations of political pressure, Patil said, “Can any political party misuse the central agencies against any institution without any corruption charges or wrongdoings? Unless there is concrete evidence the central agencies do not intervene or probe. Those complaining about the legal action must first admit that some misconduct and misappropriation has taken place.”