AgriGold Scam: ED Attaches Rs 4,100 Crore Assets

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) today provisionally attached assets worth Rs 4,100 crores under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in the AgriGold Ponzi scheme case after launching investigations against the company on the basis of FIRs lodged in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka.

The attached assets include 2,809 landed properties, including a 48-acre Haailand Amusement Park in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, registered as a property of M/s Arka Leisure and Entertainments Private Limited; the shares of various companies; and several industrial plants and machinery.

The attached properties are located in the the Anantpur, Kurnool, Krishna, Chitoor, Guntur, Kadapa, Vizianagaram, East and West Godavari, Visakhapatnam, Nellore, Prakasam, Srikakulam and Kadapa districts in Andhra Pradesh; Bengaluru, Kolar, Yadgir and Mandya districts in Karnataka; Khurda district in Orissa; Krishnagiri district in Tamil Nadu; and Mahaboobnagar, Narayanpet, Khammam, Hyderabad, Rangareddy, Vikarabad, Medchal-Malkajgiri and Nalgonda districts in Telangana.

Initial investigations have revealed that the scam was perpetrated by accused Avva Venkata Rama Rao through his AgriGold Group of Companies.

Rao and his seven brothers hatched a well-planned conspiracy along with several other associates, and set up more than 150 companies. They then started collecting deposits from the general public with a promise of providing developed plots / farm lands, or of letting them withdraw the deposits with a high rate of return on maturity/pre-term.

Thousands of commission agents, who were engaged to lure people by promising various schemes with hefty returns, managed to collect Rs 6,380 crore from 32,02,628 investors. In the end, however, the investors thus duped neither got the plots nor could recover their deposits.

The investigation also revealed that Venkata Rama Rao and his family went on a siphoning spree and illegally diverted the public deposits into a myriad verticals and private companies which were directly owned by them and had been incorporated with the help of the infamous Mossack Fonseca in Cayman Islands.

Their names also figured in the Paradise Leaks.