The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has claimed to have tracked property worth over Rs one crore owned by Iman Gangopadhyay, the daughter of a former bureaucrat and the friend of Abhishek Sil, the son of private real estate promoter arrested in connection with the alleged multi-crore recruitment scam in West Bengal.
ED sleuths while conducting raid and search operations at the residence of Ayan Sil last month in connection with the agency's probe in the alleged scam in recruitment of teaching and non-teaching staff in state-run schools, secured incriminating documents suggesting similar scam in recruitments in several municipalities in the state.
Now Iman Gangopadhyay's father before his retirement recently was in the rank of joint director with the state municipal affairs & urban development department, the nodal department for all urban civic bodies in the state, including the municipal corporations and municipalities.
Sources said that the central agency sleuths are trying to join the dots on whether the former bureaucrat had any role to play in the scam.Recently, the ED sleuths questioned Iman, for hours at the its office in Salt Lake and in face of interrogation she has given the sleuths the details of assets and property in her name, the total value of which is to the tune of Rs one crore.
ED sleuths learnt that she also jointly owns a company christened 'Fossils' with Abhishek Sil, son of Ayan Sil. The office is located at the posh Bondel Road area in South Kolkata.Last month, ED claimed that their sleuths had been able to track Rs 40 crore collected by Sil from these municipalities' recruitment irregularities scam alone.
The central agency sleuths, however, suspect that the amount could be much higher in the coming days.ED sources said that while this is the collection amount only from the municipalities' recruitment irregularities, the central agency sleuths are yet to reach the final calculation of proceeds collected by the arrested real estate promoter from the scam relating to the recruitment of teaching and non-teaching staff in state-run schools.
As per initial estimates done by ED, the collection made by Sil from the two scams combined will be well over Rs 100 crore.