The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is going through the balance sheets of at least four companies that have links with Arpita Mukherjee and have decided to summon some of the directors to find out if these served as “shell” companies to park“proceeds of crime”.
The four companies whose financial statements are being scrutinised include Zamira Sunshines Limited, Symbiosis Merchants Private Limited,Sentry Engineering Private Limited and Echhay Entertainment Private Limited,senior officials in the investigating agency said.
The ED had arrested Mukherjee,whom it described as a close associate of former education minister Partha Chatterjee, on May 23 from her Tollygunge flat in connection with its probe into the alleged irregularities in school recruitments.
The ED seized ₹21.9 crore,gold and diamond jewellery from her south Calcutta flat and ₹27.9 crore, gold bars and ornaments from one of her flats in Belgharia. ED officers said of the four companies, Zamira is the newest,incorporated on March 20, 2017. One of Mukherjee’s flats in Belgharia is the registered address for the company,which has interests in “real estate activities”.
Officers of ED’s probe teams aid they have accessed the financial returns filed for 2019-2020 and were trying to find out the details of the directors.Among the four directors of Zamira is Debasish Debnath. An ED officer said Debnath used to work as a peon.Similarly, Kalyan Dhar,whose name features as one of the directors of the three other companies, is Mukherjee’s brother-in-law.
Metro had earlier reported Dhar’s work involved carrying Mukherjee’s tissue paper boxes and cosmetics to her nail-art salons and driving her car. He got a monthly salary of₹18,900.Among these three companies,Symbiosis shares the same address as Mukherjee’s ancestral house on Nawab Abdul Latif Street in Belgharia.
“We would like to know the exact roles of the directors of these companies that have links with Mukherjee, their volume and extent of businesses and how the salaries of the staff were funded,” said a senior ED official.
“She has to account for ₹49.8 crores that have been seized from her two apartments and explain her sources of income.”Officers said they would want to know from the directors of the company involved in the real estate business,for instance, about the business ventures and whether it has either taken up or completed any project to date.
Mukherjee, who was in tears on Friday while entering ESI Hospital in Joka for a health check-up, remained difficult to crack on Saturday, ED officers said.Over two sessions of interrogation,she was allegedly evasive about her sources of income and pleaded ignorance about most of the questions about the four companies and their statements of accounts,an officer said.