The Enforcement Directorate has issued orders to freeze the All India Trinamool Congress bank deposits worth Rs 440 crore under the anti-money laundering law on Wednesday. The order came under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
The orders were issued under Section 17 (1-A) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The amount of Rs 440.42 crore is held in three private bank accounts of the All India Trinamool Congress. According to the officials, the Enforcement Directorate's (ED) preliminary investigation found that about Rs 160 crore was transferred from the TMC's bank accounts to Carewell Aviation India Pvt. Ltd., a Kolkata-based non-scheduled aircraft operator, and its related entity between April 2023 and June 2026, reported news agency PTI.
Five premises in Kolkata were raided on Tuesday, including those belonging to the Carewell Group of Companies, which also operates a private jet and charter hiring entity named Carewell Aviation. The firm or TMC are yet to respond to the development.
The company is alleged to have further routed Rs 82.96 crore (between 2023 and 2026) to another newly incorporated entity. It was found that a "significant" amount was transferred to this entity. Out of this, Rs 112 crore was used for purchasing an Embraer Legacy 600 business jet and an AgustaWestland 109SP helicopter, the officials said.
These two flying assets were "rented" to the TMC, which was recently ousted from power in West Bengal by the BJP.
Last month, the Kolkata police froze debit operations on these three bank accounts based on complaints from the TMC's rebel MLAs seeking a probe into the source of the funds, amid an ongoing bitter internal battle over control of the party's war chest.
On July 2, the Calcutta High Court, while hearing a petition filed by the Mamata Banerjee-led faction of the TMC challenging the debit freeze of the party's bank accounts, directed the private bank authorities to disclose the corpus held in those accounts.
