Charge sheet against Lalu's daughter, son-in-law

More trouble brewed for the Lalu Prasad family on Saturday with the ED filing a charge sheet against the RJD chief's daughter and Rajya Sabha MP Misa Bharti and her husband in a money-laundering case.

The Enforcement Directorate's (ED) action came just hours before a Ranchi court convicted Lalu in a fodder scam case.

Bharti, her husband Shailesh Kumar and their company, Mishail Packers and Printers Pvt Ltd, among others, were named in the charge sheet filed in a court here in connection with a case of laundering Rs 1.20 crore.

The case was registered by the ED following investigations into a complaint filed by the Serious Fraud Investigating Office about a Rs 8,000-crore money-laundering racket involving two Delhi-based brothers, who were accused of using shell companies to help others route money.

Brothers Surendra Kumar Jain and Virendra Jain, who were arrested, were accused of laundering unaccounted money through the process of placement of funds, layering of transactions and final integration of laundering money into the banking channel camouflaged as legitimate share premium transactions, the ED said.

The ED had attached a farmhouse belonging to the couple called Palam Farms in south-west Delhi in September.

According to ED, four shell companies were used to legitimise unaccounted money belonging to the couple.

The ED claimed that 1.20 lakh shares of Bharti's company were bought during 2007-08 and 2008-09 at Rs 100 per share by four shell companies, three of which were managed by the brothers and another by Santosh Kumar Shah.

These shares were later bought by Bharti at Rs 12 per share in 2009.

It said a chartered accountant, Rajesh Agrawal, "mediated and provided" Rs 90 lakh to the brothers in advance so as to invest in the company as "share premium" while another person provided Rs 30 lakh to Shah.

The couple have "laundered unaccounted money of Rs 1.20 crore by taking accommodation entries from the Jain Brothers and Shah, through mediators, in the form of share capital and share premium by various shell companies controlled by them," the ED said in a statement.

The agency had conducted searches in several places.

"Mishail Packers and Printers Pvt Ltd was registered at the address 25, Tuglak Road, New Delhi till the shares were brought by Bharti. It was only during the year 2009-10 that the address was changed to Farm No 26 Palam Farms. Misa Bharti and Shailesh Kumar were the directors of the company during the relevant period," an ED statement said.