New Delhi, Jan 28 (UNI) Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday said that it has arrested Omkar Group’s promoters Babulal Varma and Kamal Kishore Gupta under the provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA) on Wednesday for illegal mortgage of slum property of Wadala in Mumbai.
Both the accused were produced before the Mumbai PMLA court on Thursday and sent to three day ED custody by the Court.
The Central financial probe agency initiated Investigation on the basis of FIR registered by Aurangabad Police, Maharashtra under Section 34, 406 and 420 of IPC against promoters of Omkar Group who bought a firm Surana Construction which had the ‘Slum Rehabilitation Authority' (SRA) rights for redevelopment of Anand Nagar SRA Cooperative Housing Society, Wadala, Mumbai. However, the Omkar and its promoters did not pay back the amount due to seller and also mortgaged future FSI of the said SRA project and took huge amounts of loans.
Investigation under PMLA revealed that the loans to the tune of Rs 410 crores were diverted and not used for intended purposes. No work of SRA building was undertaken and the requisite rules and procedures under SRA were ignored by the accused and documents relating to names of slum dwellers were forged to claim more FSI for mortgaging the same with banks for taking the loans.
Searches were conducted on January 25 on 11 premises including residential and office premises of key persons and many incriminating documents including digital evidences have been found and seized during the search, the ED officials said adding that the further investigation in this case was under progress.
UNI AKS SHK2056