ED freezes Rs 440 crore in three TMC accounts in laundering case

NEW DELHI: In yet another blow to TMC, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has frozen Rs 440 crore in three accounts held by the party with HDFC Bank as part of its investigation into alleged laundering of Rs 160 crore of party funds through a Kolkata-based company, Carewell Aviation.

The funds were allegedly used to buy an Embraer 600 aircraft and an Agusta chopper for Rs 112 crore in what ED considers to be dubious transactions. This is the first time the agency has seized bank accounts of a political party.‘Chopper, plane bought from TMC corpus rented to party’ Last month, Kolkata police had frozen debit operations on these three accounts based on complaints from TMC rebel MLAs seeking a probe into the source of the funds. “It is also revealed that $1.7 million was arranged as an unsecured loan in 2023 from a Cayman Islands entity to purchase the said helicopter,” the ED said. These two flying assets were “rented” to TMC, even though they were purchased from the corpus of the party, it claimed. The aircraft and chopper were solely used by a top TMC functionary and more funds were laundered as “rentals” using the aviation firm, the ED claimed. The freeze is seen as a prelude to formal attachments of the three accounts and actions against party functionaries. “The Embraer Legacy 600 aircraft and Agusta helicopter were rented to TMC itself, even though they were purchased from the corpus of the party, and substantial amounts were transferred on the pretext of aircraft usage. The above stated dubious arrangement is under probe to ascertain the actual beneficial purpose of the transactions,” the ED said. The money trail could show if TMC functionaries laundered funds through shell entities to create personal assets. Sources said ED may question its functionaries, including Mamata and Abhishek Banerjee.