Chennai : Nearly 30 kg of gold bars worth about Rs 8.5 crores belonging to sand mining baron Sekhar Reddy was attached by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) here on Monday.

The properties were attached under provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA).

According to ED Joint Director, K S V V Prasad, said that post demonetisation, Income Tax (IT) department has conducted searches at various places of Reddy who is the Managing Partner of SRS Mining and has seized about Rs 97 crore of old currencies, Rs 34 Crores of new currencies and about 177 kgs of gold bars.

Following this, the CBI registered FIRs against them for illegally converting demonetised currencies into new.

The ED is conducting investigation under PMLA against Reddy and others based on the CBI cases registered.

Reddy however has admitted that cash seized by the IT department belongs to SRS mining Company that he owns and it was unaccounted money. He has not divulged the actual source of new currencies other than stating that it is from the sand mining business, the ED statement said.

Reddy’s aide Srinivasulu has stated that he received money from SRS mining and he facilitated in converting it into gold bars through Premkumar based on Reddy’s instructions. Remaining cash was kept at various premises and the same was earlier recovered and seized by IT department.

During the course of investigation, Premkumar confessed that he received money from Srinivasulu for purchase of one kg gold bar and the 30 kgs seized from his residence was purchased similarly using demonetized currencies that belonged to Reddy.

On reasonable belief that the seized 30 kgs of gold bars, worth Rs. 8.5 crores are part of proceeds of crime, the same were provisionally attached under the provisions of PMLA.

Further investigations are in progress.