Jagan case: Court orders freezing of assets worth Rs 143 cr

A special Prevention of Money Laundering Act court has issued orders for attachment of properties worth Rs 143.74 crore of YSR Congress party chief Jagan Mohan Reddy and his associates in a disproportionate assets case being probed by the Enforcement Directorate.

In a shot in the arm to the investigators, the court has termed these frozen properties, under the PMLA, as "proceeds of crime and involved in money laundering"

The direction of the adjudicating authority came after the ED had issued attachment orders against Ramky group of companies in January this year following an investigation which allegedly found that illegal favours were done by the then Andhra Pradesh government for this company and the firm gave kickbacks for favours by remitting illegal money in a firm owned by Jagan Reddy.

The ED, in the January issued order, also had attached fixed deposits worth Rs 10 crore held in the name of Jagati Publications owned by the Kadapa MP kept in the Oriental Bank of Commerce, Jubilee hills branch Hyderabad.

Jagan, who was arrested a year ago, is at present lodged in Chanchalguda jail in Hyderabad in the same case. The instances pertain to the tenure of Jagan's father and former Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, who died in a helicopter crash in 2009.

"We come to the prima facie conclusion that the defendants (Ramky group and Jagati publications) have committed the scheduled offences, generated proceeds of crime and laundered them. No doubt the properties attached are proceeds of crime and are involved in money laundering. We therefore order confirmation of the provisional attachment order," a bench of Chairperson of the Authority S K Sharma and K Raamamoorthy said in its order of June 6.

The agency is probing the case on the basis of the first information report filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation to investigate alleged disproportionate assets amassed by Jagan especially during the tenure of his father as CM.