Mining baron Sekhar Reddy case: ED attaches 50 kgs gold

In a fresh move against Tamil Nadu mining baron Sekhar Reddy, the enforcement directorate has attached 50 kgs gold. The ED on Tuesday said that gold worth Rs 14 crore has been attached taking the total worth of assets attached in the case to Rs 68 crore.

On May 30, 30 kgs of gold worth Rs 8.56 crore in the form of bars was attached by the department in a money laundering case against the mining baron and his associates. The Madras High Court had granted conditional bail to Sekhar Reddy on May 12 along with accomplices Srinivas and Prem Kumar. The court had asked them to cooperate with investigations and appear in the ED office on a daily basis to sign the register.

The ED, in March this year, had arrested Reddy and his two alleged associates in a money laundering case. The agency's zonal office on May 30 issued a provisional attachment order "attaching 30 kg of gold bars worth Rs 8,56,99,350 of Reddy and his associates in connection with the exchange of old notes for new currency notes under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act," the Enforcement Directorate said in a statement.

The ED had earlier attached assets worth Rs 34 crore in this case. Reddy was earlier arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation too in the same case of alleged black money generation post demonetisation. The ED had filed a criminal complaint against Reddy and others based on a CBI FIR in the case which was registered after the I-T department first searched his premises and those of his associates in November last year.

The I-T department had made one of the biggest detection of alleged unaccounted income of over Rs 142 crore in this case with the seizure of Rs 34 crore in new notes, Rs 97 crore in old currency notes of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 and gold bars weighing 177 kg, post demonetisation.

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