A day before Kolkata Police commissioner Rajeev Kumar is scheduled to sit at a meeting with officers of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in Shillong in connection with the Saradha chit fund scam investigation, the city police raided the house of the owner of a company that has “links” with the CBI’s former interim chief M Nageswara Rao.
The company with its office in Kolkata had several financial transactions with Rao’s wife and daughter. Few weeks back, the Kolkata Police authorities had raided the offices of the company. And now, on Friday, the raids were conducted in the house of Praween Agarwal in Salt Lake, the director of Angela Mercantiles Private Ltd (AMPL) in connection with a case of Bowbazar police station. A senior officer of Kolkata Police confirmed that the raids took place today.
The Bengal Story had carried an exclusive story on February 4 reporting that the Kolkata Police authorities had raided the company’s office on Clive Row some weeks back. There has been an unprecedented face-off between the CBI and Kolkata Police with the CBI officers landing at the Kolkata Police commissioner’s doorstep to conduct “a secret operation” last Sunday. And some officers say that the CBI’s “move” of hurriedly conducting the said operation at the police commissioner’s house was perhaps linked to the earlier raids.
A Kolkata Police team had conducted raids a couple of months back in the offices of Angela Mercantiles Private Ltd (AMPL) in connection with a case of Bowbazar police station.
AMPL is a non-banking finance company (NBFC) with its registered office on 5 Clive Row (Dr Rajendra Prasad Sarani). Till October 2018, the registered office was in CA block of Salt Lake City, Sector-I. It was incorporated in February 1994.
It has earlier come to light, in various newspaper reports that records maintained by the Registrar of Companies (RoC) indicate a series of financial transactions between Rao’s wife M Sandhya and AMPL. She had borrowed Rs 25 lakh from AMPL in the financial year ending March 2011, and between financial years ending 2012 and 2014, M Sandhya gave loans amounting to Rs 1.14 crore to AMPL in three tranches — Rs 35.56 lakh in FY’12, Rs 38.27 lakh in FY’13 and Rs 40.29 lakh in FY’14.
Rao has earlier defended the financial transactions between his wife and the private firm with all relevant details.
Rao is learnt to have issued the same statement again on Friday, denying his connection with the company.
However, Kolkata Police sources say that they found documents during the recent raids that show Rao’s daughter received money from the company as salary.
It was found that during 2013-14 to 2015-16, “despite no operational address” (the Salt Lake Sector-I address is residential), the company paid Rs.14 lakh to her as salary, said an officer. In fact, Rs 4.5 lakh was paid on a single day in 2014 as salary of a full year, which the Kolkata Police authorities observed as rather unusual.
There are several other transactions of the company that the Kolkata Police team is currently probing as they appear not clear and transparent, and Friday’s raid in the Salt Lake residence of the company’s director was relating to the same probe, officers said.
