The financial crime watchdog in India has upped the ante in its look at the TTD matter. In a series of co-ordinated searches, the agency says it has come by property investments in excess of Rs 45 crore and put its hands on some 60 lakh in hard cash. They say 15 spots in as many as six states were hit, which speaks to the size of the fraud they are up against.
A wider signal to the dairy and temple supply chains
For the Hyderabad Zonal Office of the ED, this was about following up on some suspected money-laundering with ties to the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams. Make no mistake: for those in temple procurement or the dairy side of things, if you have any kind of convoluted finances or hazy middlemen, you can expect to be put under the microscope.
Some of the records they have in hand from the raids don’t look good. They seem to be paper trails put together to stand up to scrutiny. Put to the test, and you’ll have some explaining to do when it comes to vendor checks and audits in these kinds of institutions.
Key takeaways from the crackdown
This is what the ED made of the Wednesday action:
– Over Rs 45 crore in properties with ties to the proceeds
– A haul of 60 lakh in cash from a number of premises
– 15 sites in six states were in play
How the money trail was put together, per ED
If you go by the documents the agency has, there is a tangle of legal entities and businesses. They are of the view that these were put to work to run some phony sales and purchases, all to hide and layer the Proceeds of Crime.
Investigators say the money made off the back of the sub-standard ghee for TTD was put into real estate. The ED also has some info on a few more assets that are said to be in the name of the accused or their kin.
Where the raids happened and who is under the scanner
They made a point of being in eight cities for this: Mumbai, Delhi, Guntur, Dehradun, Roorkee, Dindigul, Bikaner and Ahilyanagar. Both homes and offices were part of the probe.
You have names like Ajay Kumar Sugandh, Mahesh Kumar Rohira, Ashish Agarwal, Rajesh and Apurva Chavda, the Jains (Pomil and Vipin), Raju Rajasekaran and Machindra Shantaram Lanke. Then there are the plants: AR Dairy in Dindigul, Malganga in Ahilyanagar and Bhole Baba in Roorkee were all on the list.
Case background and what comes next
All of this PMLA, 2002, work by the ED is based on an FIR filed against AR Dairy and others. The charge is a conspiracy with some TTD people to defraud the temple body and make an unearned profit with the ghee.
By zeroing in on how the supplier payments may have been laundered, the ED is seeing if there was a cover-up to go with the lapses in the dairy chain. That could set a new tone for how big institutions do their due diligence.
The ED is not done yet. They will be going over what they have and the property files to see just how far the network and the funds have reached.
It is a case in point for the dairy industry. You can bet that for any contract with a faith-based or public entity, you will need to show your cards and where the money is coming from. TTD and its likes will have to be more thorough in how they vet their suppliers.
What the enforcers do tends to move the market. Should there be any attachments or cases filed, you will see suppliers in a hurry to get their house in order, and buyers will be less forgiving to keep the risk at bay.
