ED attaches ABG Shipyard's Rs. 2,747-cr assets in fraud case

CBI had registered the case on a complaint from SBI for the alleged offences of criminal conspiracy. SBI has an exposure of Rs2,468.51 crore as part of a consortium of 28 banks and FIs led by ICICI Bank

New Delhi: The ED on Thursday said it has attached dockyards, agricultural lands, commercial properties and bank deposits worth more than Rs2,747 crore as part of an alleged bank loan fraud linked money laundering investigation against ABG Shipyard Ltd, its group companies and linked entities. The seized properties include shipyards located at Surat and Dahej in Gujarat, agricultural lands and plots, various commercial and residential premises in Gujarat and Maharashtra and bank accounts owned by ABG Shipyard Ltd., its group companies and other related entities, the federal agency said in a statement.

The total value of the provisionally attached assets, under the Prevention of Money Laundering (Act), is Rs2,747.69 crore. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) action comes a day after the CBI arrested the founder of the company Rishi Kamlesh Agarwal. Probe found that the ABG Shipyard Ltd and its CMD Agarwal availed various credit facilities/loans from consortium of Banks led by the ICICI Bank, Mumbai, on pretext of meeting its capital requirements and other business expenses, the ED said.

However, it said, ABG Shipyard Ltd 'misappropriated' the credit facilities availed from the consortium and diverted the funds for the purposes other than its actual cause in the garb of various loans/advances/investments, etc., to various related entities incorporated in India and abroad. These alleged illegal transactions eventually caused monetary loss to the tune of Rs 22,842 crore to the banks consortium. The attached assets belong to ABG Shipyard Ltd, its group companies, Bermaco Energy Systems Ltd, Dhananjay Datar, Savita Dhananjay Datar, Krishna Gopal Toshniwal and Viren Ahuja, it said.

The money laundering case stems from the FIR filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in February. The CBI had registered the case on a complaint from the State Bank of India for the alleged offences of criminal conspiracy, cheating, criminal breach of trust and abuse of official position under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Prevention of Corruption Act. The SBI, with an exposure of Rs 2,468.51 crore, was part of a consortium of 28 banks and financial institutions led by the ICICI Bank, CBI officials had said.

The ABG Shipyard has been a major player in Indian ship building industry and operated from its shipyards located at Dahej and Surat in Gujarat.