The special court of Arun Bhardwaj, New Delhi has awarded three years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 50 lakh to Binay Prakash, the then managing director and proprietor of Jharkhand based M/s Domco Smokeless Fuels Pvt. Ltd in the coal block allotment scam case.
To other convict Vasant Diwakar Manjrekar (director of company) the court awarded three years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 20 lakh. Paramananda Mondal is the director of the company whom the court awarded three years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 10 lakh. Similar punishment was awarded to Sanjay Khandewal, who is a Kolkata based chartered accountant.
Earlier on Tuesday, the court had held all four as well as the company for committing crime and observed that guilty persons had hatched systematically conspiracy to cheat both the ministry of coal and steel to secure allocation of the Lalgarh (North) coal block in West Bokaro Coalfield in Jharkhand on the basis of false and fabricated documents.
The coal block was allotted to the company on 8th July, 2005. Binay Prakash had also obtained pecuniary benefit of Rs 7 crores by offering to sell the shares of the company on premium after he secured an allocation of the coal block for the company.
The CBI had registered the case in this matter in July 2014 under section 120-B, 420 of the IPC. Prior to this the agency carried a preliminary enquiry on the directions received from CVC related to coal blocks allocated during the period from 1993 to 2005.
As per the enquiry report the Lalgarh (North) Coal block was identified in favour of the company by the 19th Screening Committee for the captive use on November 24, 2003.
But on 13 September 2012, the ministry of coal cancelled the allocation when the fraud was discovered.
Notably, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) is also prosecuting them under provisions of the prevention of Money Laundering. ED has filed the chargesheet before the PMLA court of Bharat Parashar in New Delhi.
It also attached movable and immovable properties of the company, promoter and his relatives.
The property includes amounts parked in the Axis Bank account of Ranchi based Hotel Le Lac. The hotel is said to be owned by Binay Prakash.
As per the ED Binay Prakash had invested proceeds of crime to develop one of the government plots in NCR through M/s Kamakhya Builders. This construction company is controlled by Binay Prakash.
