Teachers' scam: ED identifies lottery angle for conversion of unaccounted money

Kolkata, Feb 8 (IANS) Enforcement Directorate (ED) probing the multi-crore teachers' recruitment scam in West Bengal has reportedly procured some vital clues that hint towards the arrested youth Trinamool Congress leader, Kuntal Ghosh having used the lottery route for conversion of his unaccounted receipts of the proceeds into accounted ones.

ED sources said that the lottery angle in case of Ghosh is somewhat similar to the clues that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) procured against Trinamool Congress strongman and the party's Birbhum district president Anubrata Mondal. The latter would procure prize-winning lottery tickets from different individuals and use them in converting unaccounted money from the cattle-scam proceeds into accounted ones.

However, ED sources said that there is a basic difference between the style of functioning of Mondal and Ghosh in this matter. While there are allegations against Mondal that his men used to procure these prize-winning tickets forcefully from individuals by paying them paltry amounts much lower than the prize amount, Ghosh's men used to procure the prize-winning tickets by convincing the winner and in most cases paying an amount slightly higher than the prize money won.

The second difference is that Mondal mainly targeted those prize-winning lottery tickets that involved jackpots, second prize and third prize where the winning amounts were in crores or lakhs. However, in the case of Ghosh, he targeted the prize-winning tickets with smaller winning amounts in thousands to skip public attention.

ED sources said that they have got some clues that Kuntal used to run a chain of informers in different districts who used to regularly keep track of individuals winning such lottery tickets in those districts.

After collecting the tickets from the original prize winner, he used to present the tickets to the office of the lottery agency concerned along with bank account details where the prize money has to be deposited. Multiple bank accounts opened in the names of his different close associates were opened for this purpose.