Kolkata Lottery Scam: ED Seizes Rs 3 Crore Cash in Massive Crackdown on Bogus Operations
The Enforcement Directorate seized around Rs 3 crore cash from the residence of a businessman in Kolkata, as a part of a wide-ranging investigation into a massive lottery scam. The searches are aimed in connection with alleged illegal operation of printing and distribution of spurious lotteries, as the ED launched a series of searches at various places in West Bengal. The ED had started investigating the issue based on some credible information with regard to apparent financial irregularities that had some nexus with the lottery operations in the state.
The ED team that conducted the search operation at the businessman's place on Kavi Bharati Sarani in Kolkata is still in the process of counting the cash seized. The agency used special note-counting machines for processing the gigantic amount. Along with the cash, documents related to the lottery scam were confiscated from another place at Madhyamgram in North 24 Parganas where the scam was to have been run. The premise at Madhyamgram was both an office and godown of the racket, which once more reveals that it was the handiwork of some well-organised racketeers.
Sources confirmed that the search is part of a larger money laundering investigation by the ED, and more locations will be searched in connection with the scam. The probe by the ED spans several states. The previous investigations revealed links to lottery rackets in Tamil Nadu, wherein assets worth more than Rs 277 crore were attached. Now, the enforcement agency is concentrating its efforts on discovering the full scope of the network behind the scam of influential people in the business of printing and distributing fraudulent lottery tickets.
The Kolkata operation, apparently, has been a big dent for the network involved in the scam. According to ED, it will now surely try to track down all those who have laundered this illicit money into the system and bring them into the books. Officials think that the hordes of documents they have seized along with the search going on, would help them understand the entire scale of the operations and their scale across multiple states.
As the case will be probed further, the ED is also likely to dig deeper into additional related links and even money laundering systems associated with this criminal lottery network.
