Lucknow: The Enforcement Directorate has attached assets worth Rs 1.77 crores of alleged journalist Rana Ayyub under the Money Laundering Act. The ED has, in its attachment order said, “Rana Ayyub has cheated the general Public Donors in a pre-planned manner and with the intention to cheat the general public donors”.
The order says that Rana Ayyub’s scam started right from the time she collected the money and started withdrawing it from the savings account of herself and her family members. The ED order further said that a Fixed Deposit amounting to Rs. 50 Lakh was booked from her saving bank account through net banking and opening a separate Current bank account and subsequently, funds were transferred from her saving bank account and bank account of her sister and father and did not utilize for the purpose for which it was raised by Rana Ayyub.
Terming the funds raised and misused by Rana Ayyub as “proceeds of crime”, the ED order stated that Rana Ayyub knowingly indulged in “Proceeds of Crime including its acquisition, possession, use and projecting it as untainted property and therefore, she has committed the offence of money laundering as defined under section 3 of the Act, 2002 which is punishable under section 4 of the Act”. The actions by Ayyub are considered scheduled offences under the PMLA, ED said.
While the Uttar Pradesh Police has not yet filed a charge sheet in the case, the ED has stated that if the assets of Rana Ayyub are not attached by the ED, the department has reason to believe that this money would be siphoned off, making it impossible for the amount to be attached later, if the ED were to wait for the charge sheet to be filed.
Considering the reasons stated, ED provisionally attached the amount collected by Rana Ayyub, obtained and used criminally, for a period of 180 days from the date of the issuance of this order.
FIR No. 2049/2021 dated 07/09/2021 was registered by the Indirapuram Police Station, Ghaziabad Police, U.P, against Rana Ayyub for the commission of offences under Sections 403/406/418/420 of IPC, 1860 and Section 66D of Information Technology Amendment Act, 2008 and Section 4 of Black Money Act. The allegation in the FIR was that she illegally acquired money from the general public in the name of charity. The complaint was filed by Vikas Sankrityayan on the 28th of August 2021.
There were three campaigns mentioned in the FIR, pursuant to which, Rana Ayyub had raised crores from the public.
(a) Funds for slum dwellers and farmers during April- May 2020.
(b) Relief work for Assam, Bihar and Maharashtra during June- Sept 2020.
(c) Help for Covid-19 impacted people in India during May-June 2021.
The FIR mentioned that while Rana Ayyub is a journalist, she received money from foreign donors for which she did not have the required permissions mandated under Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, 2010.
The ED had, on the 11th of November 2021 received an email from the complainant with details of the case. In the email, the complainant had sent a letter received from Ketto, sent to donors. The letter by Ketto informed the donors that for the three campaigns ₹1.90 Crore and USD 1.09 Lacs [total in INR 2.69 Cr. Approx.] were received out of which only ₹1.25 Crores have been spent. “For any query relating to utilization of funds the donor has been advised to reach out directly to the campaigner at xyz@gmail.com”, the letter read.
On the 19th of May 2020, Rana Ayyub made a fixed deposit of Rs 50 lakhs in the name of her father from the funds raised by the public. Rana Ayyub hilariously stated that they had earmarked money for a hospital. She claimed that because the “government was hounding her”, the NGOs and the people she was in touch with backed out and the hospital plan could not take off.
She further claimed to ED that on the advice of her bank manager who knew she was working on a “Noble Cause”, an FD in her father’s name was made. She said that it was the bank manager who suggested she make an FD of Rs. 50 lakh as the FD would earn interest and give additional money to the hospital.
Interestingly, in an agreement between Rana Ayyub and Ketto, the purpose of this campaign was stated as “to help 2000 poor farmers from Nasik and Latur and poor people from Dharavi and Navi Mumbai by way of providing a package of Oil, Rice, Sugar, Dal, Hospital Fees etc”. However, the purpose of building a hospital was not the stated purpose.
To this, Rana Ayyub said that to her “memory”, no agreement of this kind existed.
On the 13th July 2020, after the end of the second campaign, Rana Ayyub had transferred Rs 50 lakhs to her new current account. Rana Ayyub claimed to the ED that the bank manager who oversaw her savings account told her that due to limits on the amount of withdrawal and owing to the fact that she was supposed to be doing relief work with this money, she should open a current account linked to her saving account where she could debit and credit this money without any restrictions.
Through the investigation, the ED has now attached the amount lying unutilised. The amount comes to Rs 1,77,27,704. This includes the fixed deposit of Rs 50 lakh in her father’s name, an available balance in the bank account of Rs. 57,19,179 and an amount of Rs. 76.00 Lakh (out of the available balance) which was credited on 29.09.2021 from her father’s bank account out of the funds raised by launching campaigns by Rana Ayyub.