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New Delhi: On Saturday, official sources The Enforcement Directorate (ED) carried out searched the campus of major realty company DLF in Gurugram as part of a money laundering case against real estate firm Supertech and its promoters. Documents were reportedly recovered during the operation conducted over the past few days in connection with the ED’s investigation against Supertech.
Sources said the action is related to the ED’s probe against Supertech. E-mailed and asked DLF in this regard, but no response so far. According to ED sources, DLF’s office was searched as the agency required “some documents” related to the ongoing probe. “Searches were carried out as we needed some documents in the ongoing probe. The searches are now over,” a source in the agency said.
The ED had arrested Supertech promoter Ram Kishore (RK) Arora in June in this case. A case registered under criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) was registered by the police departments of Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh against Supertech Limited and its group companies for defrauding 670 home buyers of Rs 164 crore 26 It is connected with FIR.
The ED had said that ‘Hundreds of crores of funds were misappropriated through the Supertech group and they failed to fulfill their agreed obligations to provide timely possession of flats to the customers.’ The ED case against Supertech lodged two years ago stems from FIRs registered in Delhi, Haryana and UP by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the local police accusing Supertech of hatching a “criminal conspiracy” to cheat home buyers.
It is that the Supertech Group in 2013-14 settled on exorbitant prices of Rs 440 crore from customers and home buyers to buy land in Gurugram, while its earlier mooted projects in Noida were not completed. The ED in August this year also filed a chargesheet against R.K. Arora, chairman and promoter of Supertech, his company, and eight others in the money laundering case. They have been accused of defrauding at least 670 buyers of Rs 164 crore.
The ED arrested Arora on 27 June this year under sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), after he was questioned by the agency thrice. In October, a Delhi court had denied Arora ‘default bail’.
According to the ED, the agency is probing money laundering in connection with 26 FIRs and has found that Supertech and its directors cheated people by collecting funds from prospective home buyers as advance against flats that were never delivered.
According to the charge sheet filed by the ED, the money taken from the home buyers was then diverted. It is further alleged that the company also took project-specific term loans for the purpose of construction of housing projects that never materialised.“These funds collected from people and also the bank were diverted and misappropriated for buying more land which was then pledged as collateral to borrow funds from banks,” the source quoted earlier said.
The Supertech group had also defaulted on payments to banks, ED said. It is alleged that a new project was started on this newly acquired land and advance money was collected from hundreds of home buyers and loans were taken from banks/NBFCs, which turned out to be NPAs and were declared as ‘fraudulent’ by the banks. Let us tell you that earlier in Noida the district administration had sealed the office of Supertech Group. The district administration had taken this action to recover dues from the group’s Supertech Township.
