Assets worth about Rs. 35 million belonging to an alleged organised criminal and drug trafficker known as “Loku Patty” have been frozen, police said.
The action was taken by the Illegal Assets Investigation Division in connection with an investigation into the suspect under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.
Police said a 15-perch plot of land and a two-storey house built on it, at Welipenna, have been frozen. Further investigations are continuing.
What a freezing order does
A freezing order under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act blocks the sale, transfer or mortgaging of property while investigators establish whether it was acquired with the proceeds of crime. It is a holding measure, not a forfeiture: the property remains in the suspect’s name unless a court later orders it confiscated.
The Illegal Assets Investigation Division was set up to pursue the financial side of organised crime rather than individual drug seizures, on the reasoning that trafficking networks are more effectively disrupted by stripping out their assets than by arrests alone. The unit has moved against a series of properties linked to alleged traffickers in recent months.
No further details of the suspect’s identity, current custody status or the other holdings under examination have been released, and the value placed on the Welipenna property is the division’s own estimate.
