ED seizes house of ex MD IFFCO in Rs 685 crore money laundering case in ‘Fertiliser Import Scam’

It is the tip of the iceberg in India’s largest Fertiliser Import Scam. 

The Excise Department has attached another house of ex IFFCO MD Udai Shankar Awasthi in the plush South Delhi Hauz Khas Enclave on 3d June. With this the total attached assets seized including Rs 37 crore in the Swiss Bank goes upto Rs 86 crores.  The laundered amount currently under investigation is Rs 685 crores. As per the ED this was the  illegal payment made as commissions by foreign suppliers of fertilisers to the Dubai based sons of US Awasthi during the 2017-2014 period.

           

But this is the tip of the iceberg in India’s largest Fertiliser Import Scam that syphoned out thousands of crores as fertiliser subsidy each year funded by the  Indian taxpayer from 2007 to 2014. The key beneficiaries of the scam were not IFFCO’s MD US Awasthi or Indian Potash Ltd’s MD PS Gehlot, both under detention and being interrogated by the ED. These two 70 plus gentlemen were the key players who conducted the scam. The chief beneficiaries were the political masters during the UPA II  and the bureaucrats who helped IPL import bypassing state run importers MMTC and STC . The key beneficiaries were the then fertiliser minister the late Ram Vilas Paswan, the then secretary Fertiliser, the Finance Minister P.Chidambaram and the top bosses of the UPA . The probe into the scam that has  now began belatedly will hopefully expand its horizon in the coming months to snare the key beneficiaries. 

                                              

                                         

In October 2020, my book The Inside Story of Indian Banking was published by Rupa highlighting India’s biggest fertiliser import scam that lasted for a decade and amounted to anything between Rs 50,000 crore to Rs 100,000 crore. Use the Read Inside facility available in Amazon ( page 26 onwards) to know the full details of the scam and how it made India which was self sufficient in fertilisers in 2002 the world’s biggest importer in 2007. In July 2021 the ED filed cases against Awasthi, Gehlot and several others and investigations began unravelling the first layer of the multilayer scam. Let me assure you - This is just the beginning ……much more is in store that will be bared in the months to come.  Keep watching.