Coalgate: ED slaps money-laundering charge on Parakh, Kumar Mangalam Birla

NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate ( ED) has lodged 16 cases under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in connection with coal block allocations scam with the latest being filed against former coal secretary PC Parakh and KM Birla of the Aditya Birla group besides Congress MPs Dasari Narayan Rao and Naveen Jindal.

All these cases were registered last week after CBI sent case files related to 16 of the 19 FIRs it has lodged in the case to ED. Interestingly, the CBI has already filed closure reports in four of the 19 FIRs.

Sources said the case against Parakh and Birla is in connection with alleged irregularities in allocation of Talabira coal block to Hindalco, an Aditya Birla Group company, in 2005. A CBI raid at Hindalco premises last year had yielded Rs 25 crore unaccounted cash. Income Tax department had launched an investigation following which the company paid taxes accruing to the recovered cash. ED is likely to investigate the source of this money as well.

The ED case is based on the CBI FIR which has alleged that Neyveli Lignite Limited was to be given Talabira II block but Parakh allegedly favoured Hindalco and allowed it to share the block with Neyveli, leading to notional loss to the exchequer.

The agency has alleged that during 2005, these people had entered into a criminal conspiracy and the then public servant (Parakh) abused his position and showed undue favour to the Odisha-based industry in allocation of Talabira II and Talabira III coal blocks.

Parakh, who was recently questioned by CBI in connection with the case, has strongly denied any wrongdoing and said that if he was guilty of the allocation then so was the PM.

In the 16 FIRs that ED has registered, companies booked by CBI such as AMR Iron and Steel, JLD Yavatmal Energy, Vini Iron and Steel Udyog, JAS Infrastructure Capital Pvt Ltd, Vikash Metals, Grace Industries, Gagan Sponge, Jindal Steel and Power, Rathi Steel and Power Ltd, Jharkhand Ispat, Green Infrastructure, Kamal Sponge, Pushp Steel, Hindalco, BLA Industries, Castron Technologies and Castron Mining and others are under scanner.