The Enforcement Directorate has provisionally attached 45 acres of land worth about ₹55 crore in Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore allegedly held in the name of a “benami” company of former Telecom Minister A. Raja, the agency said on Thursday.

The Enforcement Directorate established that A. Raja, during his tenure as Union Minister of Environment and Forests (2004 to 2007) granted environmental clearances to a Gurugram real-estate company. It is one of the largest real estate companies in the country, also listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange, it said.

“... during the course of PMLA [Prevention of Money Laundering Act] investigation, ED has found that the real-estate company has given kickback to A. Raja as quid pro quo for awarding the environmental clearance, around the same period in the year 2007, in the garb of land commission income in the hands of one ‘benami’ company of A. Raja,” said the ED statement.

Benami means ‘no name’ or ‘without name’ and such properties are those in which the real beneficiary is not the one in whose name the property has been purchased.

The agency alleged that Mr. Raja had incorporated the company in 2007 in the name of his family members and his close family friend, “with the sole objective of using it as a vehicle to park the proceeds of crime”. “The said company was never engaged in any business activity since inception and the entire money received in the company was quid pro quo from the real estate deal and was used for acquiring land in Coimbatore district,” it said.

In October 2022, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) chargesheeted Raja, who is also currently the Nilgiris MP, in a disproportionate assets case that it registered in 2015.

In its charge filed before the Special Court in Chennai, CBI had alleged that in January 2007, a close associate of Raja-- C Krishnamurthy had set up a company Kovai Shelters Promoters in which a payment of Rs 4.56 crore was received in February that year from DLF as commission for the purchase of land in Kanchipuram. 

Image source: PTI