ED attaches assets of Jacqueline Fernandez worth ₹7.27 crores in money laundering case

|HT|

The Enforcement Directorate on Saturday attached assets worth ₹7.27 crore belonging to actor Jacqueline Fernandez in the money laundering case involving conman Sukesh Chandrashekhar. The attached property is a fixed deposit. Jacqueline Fernandez was stopped from flying out of India last year. She has also been interrogated by the Enforcement Directorate in connection with the case.

According to reports, Chandrashekhar during interrogation by the Enforcement Directorate had claimed he gave expensive presents to the actor, which included a horse worth ₹52 lakh and a Persian cat worth ₹9 lakh. He had also claimed to have been in a relationship with the actor.

Sukesh Chandrashekhar is the alleged mastermind of the ₹200 crore money laundering case, which he reportedly executed while sitting behind the bars in Delhi's Rohini jail. In August last year, the Delhi Police's Economic Offences Wing had registered an FIR against Chandrashekhar for allegedly duping high profile people including the wives of former Ranbaxy promoters Shivinder Singh and Malvinder Singh . According to the FIR, a man posing as a home ministry officials had promised to help them with the case of the husbands who were arrested in 2019 for allegedly causing losses of ₹2,000 crore to Religare Finvest Ltd. It was later found that Sukesh Chandrashekhar had planned and executed the entire con job with the help of jail officials.

The ED chargesheet says that Jacqueline Fernandez allegedly received gifts funded from the money Chandrashekhar had extorted from the wives of Ranbaxy ex-promoters. The actor told the ED, in her statement recorded in August and October last year, that she "received" gifts like three designer bags from Gucci, Chanel, two Gucci outfits for gym wear, a pair of Louis Vuitton shoes, two pairs of diamond earrings and a bracelet of multi-coloured stones and two Hermes bracelets from Chandrashekhar.

She told the federal anti-money laundering agency that she returned a Mini Cooper car which she had similarly received.

(Except for the headline and the pictorial description, this story has not been edited by THE DEN staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)