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ED has got seven days’ custody remand of three accused jailed in the Shine City scam. This includes Asif Naseem, brother of Scam mastermind Shine City Group of Companies MD Rashid Naseem, who is lodged in Lucknow jail. Apart from this, Shine City director Amitabh Kumar Srivastava and his wife Meera Srivastava, who are lodged in Varanasi jail, have also been taken on remand. ED will interrogate all three till April 16.
It is noteworthy that more than 250 cases were registered in various police stations of the state in connection with the embezzlement of investors’ money by Shine City amounting to about Rs 60 thousand crores. On the basis of this, ED also registered a case under Money Laundering Act and started investigation. During this time, Rashid Naseem fled to Dubai and started trading diamonds with fugitive Nirav Modi. At the same time, the ED continued to take action against people associated with Shine City. ED officials had recorded the statements of Rashid’s brother Asif, Amitabh and Meera after interrogating them in jail last year.
ED investigation revealed that the three had transferred the money defrauded from investors to several shell companies. Asif Naseem was a director in 20 companies of Shine City Group. He had purchased many private properties with investors’ money. At the same time, Amitabh and Meera Srivastava also joined M/s Kingston Buildcon Pvt. Ltd. An amount of Rs 22 crore was embezzled through the company and many properties were purchased from it.
The ED had presented all three in the special PMLA court in the capital on Tuesday and sought seven-day custodial remand. Let us tell you that on November 24 last year, ED had raided 18 locations of the accused and recovered important documents etc. related to the scam. Earlier, ED had also arrested Shine City agents Shashibala, Abhishek Singh, Durga Prasad and Uddhav Singh. ED has so far seized properties worth Rs 128 crore of Shine City in this case.