ED gets Indrani Mukerjea’s custody, to quiz her in money laundering case

She will be interrogated in Byculla Jail on November 24 and December 6

Indrani Mukerjea PTI PTI

A special CBI court on Thursday granted the Enforcement Directorate two-day custody of former INX Media director Indrani Mukerjea for interrogation in a case of money laundering against her, Karti Chidambaram and others.

The agency, through its counsel Hiten Venegavkar, had moved an application seeking directions to the Mumbai District Women Prisons’ Byculla Jail authorities to allow them to interrogate Indrani for two days — on November 24 and December 6.

The application was filed under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and relied upon the FIR registered by CBI against INX Media Pvt Ltd, through Indrani Mukerjea, Pritam (Peter), Karti Chidambaram, M/s Chess Management Services Pvt Ltd, M/s Advantage Strategic Consulting Pvt Ltd under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and PMLA.

The Hindu has a copy of the order that reads: “On March 13, 2007, M/s INX Media approached the chairman of Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) seeking its approval for their permission to issue preferential allotment, in one or more tranches: (i) upto 14,98,995 equity shares of ₹10 each and (ii) upto 31,22,605 convertible, non cumulative, redeemable preference shares of ₹ 10 each collectively representing approximately 46.21% of the issue of equity share capital of INX Media on an “as converted” basis to three non-resident investors under the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).“On May 31, 2007 FIPB permitted M/s INX Media to receive FDI for ₹46.2 million (approx) as total investment inflow including premium. M/s INX Media, however received total FDI of ₹3,053.6 million, during the period August 22, 2007 to May 12, 2008. Thus, excess FDI equivalent to ₹3,007.4 million, beyond the disclosed and permitted FDI was received by INX from Mauritius-based foreign investors.

“It is suspected that illicit funds generated by Peter and Indrani were siphoned off to unknown destinations overseas and routed back to United Kingdom and India through Mauritius-based investors. It is also revealed during the investigation that Rabin Mukerjea (Peter’s older son) is handling the funds of Indrani and Peter, which were held in the form of bonds in New Zealand.”

The ED also suspected that Rabin Mukerjea has ownership/association of three accounts in Royal Bank of Scotland and accounts in ANZ Bank. It therefore concluded that Rabin, Peter and Indrani have laundered money and are involved in financial transactions in UK concerned with the illicit funds generated in India.