Bengal school job case: ED gets clues on how scam proceeds were diverted as donations to trusts

Kolkata, Dec 20 The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has identified a new angle of money laundering in the multi-crore cash-for-school job case in West Bengal where a major part of the proceeds was diverted and shown as donations to certain charitable trusts.

Sources aware of the development said that the ED has mentioned this new style of money laundering in its last and fifth supplementary charge sheet filed at a special court of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in Kolkata recently.

One such trust named in the fifth supplementary charge sheet is the Babli Chatterjee Memorial Trust, named after the deceased wife of former West Bengal Education Minister and Trinamool Congress Secretary General Partha Chatterjee, who has been behind bars since his arrest by the ED in the school-job case way back in July 2022.

In the previous charge sheet, Chatterjee’s son-in-law Kalyanmoy Bhattacharya had also been shown as a co-accused of the former Education Minister in this game of fund diversion under the masquerade of donations.

Bhattacharya, who has settled abroad with his wife and Chatterjee’s daughter Sohini Chatterjee Bhattacharya, was also questioned by the ED as well as the officials of the Income Tax department in the matter.

However, his wife had not been shown as an accused in the case though she was the Chairperson of the trust. Besides the trusts, the ED in their subsequent charge sheets had named a number of shell corporate entities linked to Chatterjee and his close associate Arpita Mukherjee.

Chatterjee and Mukherjee were arrested in July 2022, after the ED officials seized huge amounts of cash and gold from her twin residences then. Mukherjee is currently out on bail.

In the last and fifth charge sheet, the ED had also named a corporate entity linked to another prime accused Sujay Krishna Bhadra and claimed that his entity also acted as a major channel of fund diversion.

In the charge sheet, the ED has included 29 new names of individuals and corporate entities

Source: IANS