Money Laundering Prevention Authority Rules Plots Held By Lalu’s Family As Money Laundering Assets

A designated authority under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) has declared that 11 plots belonging to former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav and his family in Patna worth Rs 44.75 crore are assets in money laundering, reports PTI. The plots have been attached by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the authority has stated that they should remain attached.

The ED had last year provisionally attached three plots worth three acres in Danapur near Patna under the PMLA in connection with an Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) hotel allotment case when Yadav was the railway minister under the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government from 2004 to 2009.

Adjucating Authority Tushar V Shah said that the property would remain attached for a period of 90 days till the investigation was completed and a order of confiscation was issued by a special court.

The ED will now take over the property and put up a sign board that they are under investigation.

The plots are all registered to a company Delight Marketting Co, now known as Lara Projects LLP that lists Yadav’s wife Rabri Devi as its managing director along with his sons Tejashwi and Tej Pratap as partners and another company – Meridian Construction – that is promoted by Abu Dojana, a legislator from Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). A mall was to come up on these plots prior to the ED’s attachment of them.

A first information report (FIR) by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) alleged that Yadav as railway minister handed over the operations of two IRCTC hotels to a firm after receiving property as bribe from a benami company floated by Sarla Gupta, wife of former union minister and RJD legislator Prem Chand Gupta.

The ED’s criminal case was registered on the basis of the CBI FIR.