Chhattisgarh coal scam: ED attaches assets worth ₹152.31 crore

ED on Saturday attached ₹152.31crore worth assets belonging to several people, including Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel’s deputy secretary Saumya Chaurasia and IAS officer Sameer Vishnoi, as part of its probe into a money laundering case linked to a purported coal levy scam.

 The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday attached ₹152.31crore worth assets belonging to several people, including Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel’s deputy secretary Saumya Chaurasia and IAS officer Sameer Vishnoi, as part of its probe into a money laundering case linked to a purported coal levy scam.

Saumya Chaurasia, deputy secretary at the Chhattisgarh chief minister’s office, was arrested on December 2 by ED (Twitter/videograb)

In a statement, the federal agency said an amount of over ₹500 crore was extorted in the last two years by the accused in the case. It added that it conducted searches at more than 75 locations, including the mining departments of collectors’ offices in Korba and Raigarh regions, and gathered incriminating evidence against the accused.

“ED conducted searches at more than 75 locations, including the mining departments at collector offices of Korba and Raighad and collected incriminating evidence. ED has recorded statements of around 100 individuals and the investigation revealed that as part of a grand conspiracy, policy changes were made and director, mining, issued a government order on 15.7.2020 to modify an existing efficient online system of issuance of transport permits, to introduce a manual layer where coal users were forced to apply for no-objection certificate (NOC) with state mining officers,” the statement said.

“Since Tiwari’s employees were spread across the state, they maintained WhatsApp groups, excel sheets of each coal delivery order and the extorted amounts and shared them with Suryakant Tiwari, who in turn maintained detailed handwritten diaries of the incoming bribe amounts and their utilisation for purchase of benami lands, payment of bribes, payments for political expenditure etc,” it added.

It further said: “The fact that it ran uninterrupted without a single FIR, etc, and collected around ₹500 crore in two years, clearly indicates that all the accused persons were acting in a concerted manner at the instructions of person(s) at the highest level, having command and control over the state machinery,” the statement claimed.

Chaurasia was arrested by the agency on December 2. Vishnoi and several others have also been arrested under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

Besides Chaurasia and Vishnoi, ED also attached movable and immovable properties belonging to coal trader Suryakant Tiwari and Sunil Agarwal. The properties included cash, jewellery, flats, coal washeries and plots of land.

The agency attached 21 properties linked to Chaurasia and five linked to Vishnoi.

The agency filed a charge sheet against four people, including Vishnoi, in a Raipur court on Friday.

It said that an illegal levy of ₹25 per tonne was being extorted for every tonne of coal transported in the state by a cartel involving senior bureaucrats, businessmen, politicians and middlemen.