ED seizes Rs 100 crore in 3 months. What happens to the cash now?

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has seized cash, to the tune of nearly Rs 100 crore over the last three months during raids and searches in connection with several cases. The latest is a seizure of over Rs 17 crore from the residence of a Kolkata-based businessman in a case of fraud pertaining to a mobile gaming application.

Almost eight bank officials along with a currency counting machine were called in to count the cash recovered by the ED officials. In the past weeks, the financial probe agency made its biggest seizure of cash in history after they recovered Rs 50 crore in cash from suspended minister Partha Chatterjee’s aide Arpita Mukherjee’s apartments in connection with the West Bengal SSC scam.

Partha Chatterjee is involved in an alleged recruitment scam of Group ‘C’ & ‘D’ staff, Assistant Teachers of classes IX-XII and primary teachers. The recovered amount is suspected to be the proceeds of a crime from a teacher recruitment scam.

The counting went on for almost 24 hours and even the bank officers were tired of counting the mountain of cash that was seized.

Prior to this, the ED officials seized over Rs 20 crore in cash in Jharkhand mining scam. Further to the aforesaid seizure, the agency recovered cash across different raids and searches.

What happens to cash recovered by ED?

The financial probe agency has been allowed to seize money but, understandably so, they can’t keep the recovered cash with them. According to the protocol, whenever the agency recovers cash, the accused is given the opportunity to explain the source of the cash. If the suspect fails to satisfy the investigators with a legitimate answer, the cash is treated as unaccounted cash and ill-gotten money.