The Enforcement Directorate has recovered a whopping Rs 15 crore from West Bengal Minister Partha Chatterjee's aide Arpita Mukherjee's house. This comes days after Rs 20 crore was recovered from another of her flats. The police had to call a note-counting machine to count the allegedly illegal money.
The ED sleuths also recovered gold bars and jewelry from her flag which is so far valued at Rs 2 crore. The valuation is still on.
ED on Wednesday raided her second home in connection with the school recruitment scam. Mukherjee is said to be a close associate of Chatterjee who was also arrested by the agency in the case.
On July 23, the agency had recovered around 21 crores of unaccounted cash from her second flat in south Kolkata.
The news agency PTI reported that ED officials had to break into two Belghoria apartments as they could not find the keys. They found the cash in one of the two flats.
"We have found a good amount of money from one of the flats in a housing complex. We have brought three note-counting machines to know the exact amount," an official said.
They have also found some vital documents.
NDTV reported that Mukherjee has told the Enforcement Directorate that he used to stash money at her house and treated the premises like a "mini-bank". She reportedly told the agency that all the money used to be stashed in one room only. The minister used to visit her house every 7-10 days.
She allegedly told the agency that the illicit money had come from kickbacks received for school job transfers.
The CBI, as directed by the Calcutta High Court, is looking into the alleged irregularities committed in the recruitment of Group-C and D staff as well as teachers in government-sponsored and aided schools. The ED is tracking the money trail in the scam.
Chatterjee was the education minister when the scam took place.
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With inputs from PTI
