The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has provisionally connected property to the time of Rs 7.25 crore of an alleged accused within the Jammu and Kashmir Cricket Association case. Former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir Farooq Abdullah is beneath investigation within the case and the company had earlier connected his property as properly within the case.
The property, together with residential properties, connected by ED on Thursday belong to Ahsan Ahmad Mirza and sure others accused within the case.
The case is said to alleged irregularities in grants given by BCCI to Jammu and Kashmir Cricket Association (JKCA). It was alleged that between 2002 and 2011, funds to the tune of over Rs 43 crore (ED now claims over Rs 50 crore) had been siphoned off from the JKCA coffers. These funds had been a part of the Rs 112 crore grant given by BCCI to JKCA.
“Investigation by ED so far has revealed that Ahsan Ahmad Mirza in connivance with other office bearers of JKCA, had misappropriated JKCA Funds to the tune of Rs. 51.90 crore and utilized proceeds of crime for settling his personal and business liabilities,” the ED stated in a press release.
In 2020, ED had connected properties value Rs 14.32 crore within the case. These belonged to Mirza, Mir Manzoor Ghazanfar and Abdullah. In that attachment, Abdullah’s Gupkar highway bungalow too had been connected other than his properties in Jammu. Before that, it had additionally filed a prosecution criticism in opposition to Mirza. Abdullah has already been questioned a number of occasions within the case with the final questioning being accomplished simply forward of the DDC polls in 2020.
“Between 2006 and January 2012, when Dr Farooq Abdullah was the President of JKCA, he misused his position and clout by illegal appointments of office bearer at JKCA to whom he gave financial powers for the purpose of laundering of JKCA Funds. Investigation also reveals that Dr. Farooq Abdullah was instrumental as well as beneficiary of the laundered funds of JKCA,” the ED stated in a press release earlier.
The company had claimed that regardless of there being an present checking account of JKCA, six new financial institution accounts had been opened for alleged parking of JKCA funds and siphoning of the identical. One dormant checking account within the identify of Kashmir Wing of JKCA was additionally made operational for a similar function, the company had stated.
Omar Abdullah had then refuted the saying the properties had been ancestral. “The properties attached are largely ancestral dating from the 1970s with the most recent one built before 2003. There can be no justification for the seizures because they fail the very basic test of having been acquired as the proceeds of the “crime” being investigated, Omar had stated in a tweet.
The ED case relies on a CBI FIR of 2015. In July, 2018 CBI filed a chargesheet within the case. It charged Farooq Abdullah and three others — the then JKCA common secretary Md Saleem Khan and the then treasurer Ahsan Ahmad Mirza, as additionally J&Okay Bank government Bashir Ahmad Misgar — beneath Ranbir Penal Code provisions associated to prison conspiracy and prison breach of belief. It alleged that “Abdullah had connived with the treasurer of JKCA and others for undue siphoning off and misappropriation of funds”.
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
