Chennai: The Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday provisionally attached 50 kg of gold bars worth Rs 13.19 crore of sand mining baron Sekhar Reddy and his associates. The case under the provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act pertains to fraudulently exchanging old notes for new ones.

ED joint director KSVV Prasad said that after demonetisation, the Income Tax department has conducted searches at various places of SRS Mining managing partner Reddy and seized about Rs 97 crore of old currencies, Rs 34 crores of new notes and 177 kg of gold bars and registered FIRs.

“So far Rs 10 crore of old currencies, 6.5 kg gold bullion, Rs 34 crore of new currency and 30 kg of gold seized has already been attached provisionally,” he added.

Reddy had confessed that the cash seized was of his mining company and was unaccounted and said the new notes were from sand mining business.

Reddy’s asociate Premkumar had said he used to receive money from for purchase of gold bars and between November 20 and December 7, 2017, he bought about 80 kg gold.

The total attachments in this case was worth around Rs 68.5 crore, the ED official said and further probe was on.