TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee the CEO of company involved in cash-for-jobs scam, ED claims

For the first time since the multi-crore jobs-for-cash scam became public, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has directly named Abhishek Banerjee, the nephew and heir apparent of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, in connection with the conspiracy that has already led to the arrest of 20 people. The premier investigative agency, in a press release issued on Wednesday, said it seized “incriminating” documents after it raided multiple premises of a company in Calcutta “whose CEO is Abhishek Banerjee.” The searches were undertaken on 21 and 22 August at three different premises of the company, Leaps and Bounds Pvt. Ltd., as part of an ongoing money laundering investigation into the West Bengal teachers’ recruitment “scam”.
The federal probe agency said in the statement that the action was undertaken against the arrested accused in this case, Sujay Krishna Bhadra, who was the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the company. The company, it alleged, was “used for making dubious transactions running into crores of rupees.” Bhadra also served as a director in this company from April 2012 to March 2016 while Banerjee was the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and a director from April 2012 to January 2014, the ED said.
During the search operations, the ED said, “various incriminating documents and digital evidence were recovered and seized.” Banerjee, 35, has denied wrongdoing and had termed the ED’s action “borne out of political vendetta”. According to the affidavits submitted to the Election Commission for the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the two-time MP from Diamond Harbour had not detailed any connection with the firm. In the 2014 affidavit, he said that he had 1,000 shares of “Leaps & Bounds Private Limited’’. There is no mention of it in the 2019 affidavit. Abhishek’s father, Mamata Banerjee’s elder brother, and his mother are currently directors of the firm. Bhadra was arrested by the ED in May as part of this probe. It had also arrested former West Bengal Education Minister Partha Chatterjee, his alleged aide Arpita Mukherjee, TMC MLA and the ex-president of the West Bengal Board of Primary Education Manik Bhattacharya, TMC youth wing leaders Kuntal Ghosh and Santanu Banerjee, Ayan Sil in this case where it has filed a total of five charge-sheets under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). Partha Chatterjee was also suspended by the TMC after his arrest by the ED. Assets worth more than Rs 126 crore have been attached in this case till now.