ED raids Rohit Pawar kin's firm in case tied to cooperative bank scam

ED raids Rohit Pawar kin’s firm in case tied to cooperative bank scam

MUMBAI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday raided MLA Rohit Pawar’s company, Baramati Agro Ltd, and premises of three other firms and two individuals in a money laundering case connected to the Rs 25,000 crore Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank (MSCB) scam.

Rohit Pawar, grandnephew of NCP founder Sharad Pawar, is CEO of Baramati Agro and his father Rajendra Pawar is its managing director.

Among the other raided premises were Kannad SSK (sugar mill), Samruddhi Sugar Pvt Ltd and Hitech Engineering Corporation India Ltd along with the latter’s directors Rajendra Ingawale and Sanjay Awate. It was alleged that Kannad SSK mill that was sick was sold to Baramati Agro for Rs 50 crore through a rigged auction. All the other firms and individuals raided by the ED had helped Baramati Agro in the process.

Kannad SSK Aurangabad, had taken a loan from the MSCB Bank and defaulted the payment. In 2012, the bank sold the mill to Baramati Agro Ltd through auction.

It was alleged that apart from Pawar’s firm Baramati Agro, Hitech Engineering Corporation India Ltd and Samruddhi Sugar Pvt Ltd participated in the auction. The Rs 5 crore that Hitech Engineering paid as earnest money to participate in the bid was allegedly taken from Baramati Agro.

It was further alleged that various banks sanctioned cash credit to Baramati Agro for the purpose of working capital requirement. Baramati Agro diverted the fund and used it to purchase Kannad SSK in the auction.

The ED’s money laundering case is based on the Mumbai police FIR against office-bearers of MSCB, including around 70 politicians. A few years ago, Mumbai police’s economic offences wing (EOW) had filed a closure report in the MSCB scam stating that no fraud was committed and had given a clean chit to all politicians. The ED had opposed the Mumbai police closure report, but their intervention application was rejected by the court in 2020.

Subsequently, after Eknath Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis came to power in 2022, the EOW submitted an application before the court seeking permission to reinvestigate the auction of Jarandeshwar Cooperative Sugar Mill linked to Ajit Pawar and Baramati Agro connected to Rohit Pawar along with others in the MSCB scam after stating that these sick sugar mills were purchased through suspicious transactions.

In April last year, the ED had filed chargesheet in the Jarandeshwar Cooperative Sugar Mill, naming a company linked to Ajit Pawar and two others. The ED had mentioned Ajit Pawar’s name in the chargesheet but not named him as an accused. Subsequently, Ajit Pawar joined the Eknath Shinde government along with a group of his party MLAs.

The NCP (Sharad Pawar group) said its MLA Rohit Pawar’s recently concluded “Yuva Sangharsh Yatra” has “hit a nerve” and made the BJP insecure, prompting it to misuse government agencies to target and harass him by searching a company’s premises linked to him.

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