ED Files Charge Sheet Against Sterling Biotech’s Director in Rs 5,000 Crore Money Laundering Case

The charge sheet was filed by special public prosecutor Nitesh Rana and advocate A R Aditya before Satish Arora, the Additional Sessions Judge.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday filed a charge sheet against Sterling Biotech Limited’s director Rajbhushan Omprakash Dixit in connection with Rs 5,000 crore bank loan fraud case. The charge sheet was filed by special public prosecutor Nitesh Rana and advocate A R Aditya before Satish Arora, the Additional Sessions Judge.

The director of the Gujarat-based pharma company has been accused of taking loans of over Rs 5,000 crore from a consortium of banks led by Andhra Bank.

Enforcement Directorate files chargesheet against director of pharma firm Sterling Biotech in connection with Rs 5,000 Crore bank loan fraud case.

— ANI (@ANI) July 18, 2018

Dixit was sent to judicial custody in the money laundering case on February 9.

The former director of Andhra Bank, Anup Prakash Garg, and Delhi-based businessman Gagan Dhawan have already got arrested last November in relation with the case.

The ED has booked a money laundering case following the FIR, which was earlier filed by CBI.

The FIR alleged that the total pending dues of the group companies were Rs 5,383 crore as on December 31, 2016.

Earlier ED, under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, attached properties of Sterling Biotech Group amounting to Rs 4701 crore . ED had registered a case of money laundering against the company, its promoters and others in October 2017.

The attached assets include immovable properties of around 4,000 acres in total, plant machinery, around 200 bank accounts of various companies and accounts of promoters, shares worth Rs. 6.67 crores and various high-end luxury cars.

Several companies promoted by the Sandesara brothers had, on the basis of false and fabricated documents, fraudulently obtained credit facilities of more than Rs 5000 crores from various banks, which subsequently turned into NPAs.  The loans were sanctioned by consortium of banks led by Andhra Bank, UCO Bank, State Bank of India, Allahabad Bank and Bank of India.

(With PTI Inputs)