The assets of late Congress leader Ahmed Patel’s son-in-law, actors Dino Morea and Sanjay Khan, and DJ Aqeel have been attached by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in a criminal investigation into a money laundering case linked to alleged bank fraud. ED said the case involves a Gujarat-based pharmaceutical company called Sterling Biotech group and its absconding main promoter brothers, Nitin Sandesara and Chetan Sandesara.

It is said to be a bigger bank scam in volume than that of the Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud by fugitive diamantaires Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi, as it involves fraud to the tune of about Rs 16,000 crore. The amount involved in the PNB case is said to be about Rs 13,400 crore.

A consortium of banks led by Andhra Bank were alleged to have been duped in the case, ED said. 

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Four separate provisional orders were issued under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to attach the assets of the four people which are worth a total Rs 8.79 crore. Out of this, the value of attachment of assets for Khan is Rs 3 crore, for Dino Morea it is Rs 1.4 crore, for Aqeel Abdulkhalil Bachooali, popularly known as DJ Aqeel, it is Rs 1.98 crore and for Irfan Ahmed Siddiqui, who is Patel’s son-in-law, it is Rs 2.41 crore.

ED has also recorded the statement of Sunil Yadav, an employee of the Sandesara family, where he told the agency that Siddiqui “occupied” a home in Delhi’s Vasant Vihar, which reportedly belonged to Chetan Sandesara.

The agency had then said that it has evidence to say that Morea and Aqeel were paid some money in an alleged unauthorised manner by the pharmaceutical group between 2011-12 when they reportedly attended some family events organised by the Sandesara brothers.