Kolkata: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials probing the multi-crore West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) recruitment irregularities scam has come across one more company — the third one in the series, which has one of accused, Arpita Mukherjee as its director.
The name of the company is Symbiosis Merchants Private Limited and its registered office is 19, Nawab Abdul Latif Street, 22, Belgharia, North 24 Parganas, the locality that houses Mukherjee’s ancestral residence, where her widow mother is still residing a solitary life.
The second director of Symbiosis Merchants Private Limited is Kalyan Dhar, the same person who was the director along with Mukherjee in the other two companies namely Sentry Engineering Private Limited and Echhay Entertainment Private Limited.
ED sources have confirmed from the Registrar of Companies under the Union ministry of commerce, that Symbiosis Merchants Private Limited, which is involved in wholesale distribution business, has an authorized share capital is Rs 1,400,000 and a paid-up capital is Rs 1,360,000. The last balance sheet of the company was filed on March 31, 2021.
ED sources said that while they came to know about Sentry Engineering Private Limited and Echhay Entertainment Private Limited from the sale deeds of these two companies from the residence of Arpita Mukherjee at Diamond City Housing Complex at Tollygunge in South Kolkata, Mukherjee herself confessed about Symbiosis Merchants Private Limited during questioning.
“These three companies with Mukherjee and Dhar as directors are officially in three different types of trades. Symbiosis is in the wholesale distribution business, Sentry is in the manufacture of special purpose machinery and Echhay Entertainment is in entertainment related business. But we doubt that the nature of business registered with ROC are just camouflages and the actual purpose of purchasing these companies was to route crime proceeds to various channels,” an ED official said.
Mukherjee and the state commerce and industries minister, Partha Chatterjee will be both under ED custody till August 3. During this period, ED sleuths are likely to make all possible attempts to track on how these three bogus companies were used as tools to transfer money to different channels.
“We have reached just a small portion of the money involved in this recruitment scam. The next nine days will be extremely crucial for us and as per our estimates, the total scam amount will finally reach over a few hundred crores of rupees,” an ED official said.
(IANS)
