Topsgrup chairman Rahul Nanda’s aide and the security service firm’s senior employee M Shashidharan was arrested by Enforcement Directorate officers on Monday night in the money laundering case. The accused was produced in the special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court and was remanded in ED’s custody till Friday. Nanda had denied all allegations against him previously.
According to ED sources, Shashidharan is suspected of helping Nanda to carry out several fund transfers. While staying abroad, Nanda got money transfers done through his company executives, including Shashidharan.
The arrested accused is suspected of participating in a Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) deal involving money laundering, with Nanda. Shashidharan was allegedly working on the instructions of Nanda to carry out the money transactions, ED sources said.
Shashidharan, behalf of Nanda, had earlier filed a complaint with the Mumbai Police against Topsgrup’s former vice-president Ramesh Iyer (the complainant in ED’s case) and others for financial irregularities through cheating and forgery. The Mumbai economic offences wing (EOW) is now investigating the case.
This is the second arrest by ED in the Topsgrup case. Amit Chandole, a business associate of Shiv Sena member of legislative Assembly (MLA) Pratap Sarnaik was arrested last month.
On Monday the Bombay high court (HC) permitted ED to extend its custody of Chandole after the same had earlier been denied by a lower court.
Sources said that ED officers may confront Chandole and Shashidharan and interrogate them together in connection with suspicious funds transfers linking to MMRDA security service contracts, as well as the roles played by Nanda and Sarnaik.
Topsgrup had obtained a contract to provide security guards for MMRDA projects in alleged collusion with Sarnaik through illegal means by a “well-thought-out strategy”, ED had claimed.
The agency claimed that these illegal manoeuvres aimed to get additional inadmissible benefit by inflating the number of contracted security guards deployed at the cost of MMRDA, and illegal cash gratification to Sarnaik for facilitating this scam. The legislator had denied the allegations.
Against this “active role and criminal conspiracy”, Sarnaik used to get 50% profit earned out of the said contract and sometimes, the money used to be transferred to the account of a third person, said ED. Chandole accepted the receipt of cash from Topsgrup for the MMRDA projects, ED claimed. Therefore, part of the amount received by Topsgrup from MMRDA appears to be proceeds of crime, said ED.
Iyer’s complaint with ED says that it was Nanda and the arrested accused Shashidharan who instructed Niraj Bijlani, ex-CEO of Topsgrup, to pay the alleged illegal gratification related to MMRDA contracts to Chandole. The duo allegedly asked Bijlani to deliver the said amount every month at a café at Mallet Bunder. From May 2017 to June 2020, ₹90 lakh was given through Bijlani, Iyer alleged in his original complaint to Mumbai Police.
ED’s money laundering probe is based on a first information report (FIR) registered by Mumbai’s Yellow Gate police on October 28 on the direction of 16th metropolitan magistrate court against Nanda and his family members. The criminal case was recently transferred to the Mumbai EOW for further investigation.
The complainant filed by Iyer alleged that Nanda and others diverted huge funds from the firm’s accounts to various accounts in India and overseas. He further alleged that these funds were utilised by Nanda and others for their personal purposes such as purchasing property. The security firm was thus defrauded of ₹175 crore.
