New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has attached land parcels worth around Rs 300 crore belonging to real estate firm M3M India Infrastructures as part of its probe into a case of alleged unlawful law acquisition involving former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
The land parcels spanning 88 acres have been attached in Basharia village of Gurugram district in Haryana, the ED said Friday.
The ED’s money laundering case stems from an FIR lodged by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) against Congress heavyweight Hooda, who was Haryana CM between 2005 to 2014, Trilok Chand Gupta, former chief of the erstwhile Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA), real estate firm R.S. Infrastructure (RSIPL), and 16 other firms for alleged discrepancies in land acquisition for colony development in urban areas of the state.
The ED has now said that the directors of RSPIL, owned by M3M promoters Basant Bansal and Roop Bansal, obtained approval of licences for establishment of a commercial colony on a land parcel measuring 10.35 acres. However, they never built any commercial colony, which was a condition to obtain the licence, and instead sold the land parcel at an exorbitant rate of Rs 726 crore to Lowe Realty Private Limited, an associated entity of the Religare Group.
The proceeds of crime generated in this illegal acquisition of licences and sale were siphoned off to bank accounts of the M3M promoters and their family members for expenses of the M3M group of companies, the ED has alleged in its statement.
“This fraudulent activity of obtaining the said licences illegally has resulted in the generation of Proceeds of Crime (PoC) to the tune of Rs 300.15 crore, which were subsequently diverted from RSIPL to the promoters of M/s RSIPL into their bank accounts and to the bank accounts of their family members and subsequently utilised for operational and business expenses of M/s M3M group companies,” the ED said in its statement.
In March this year, the ED had attached land parcels at upscale locations in Delhi and Gurugram worth Rs 124 crore, owned by RS Infrastructure and other real estate companies controlled by M3M India Holdings, a holding company of the M3M group.
The ED had claimed that M3M India Holdings inflated the value of land parcels owned by RS Infrastructure to sell it at Rs 726 crore to Lowe Realty (currently known as Lowe Infra And Wellness Private Limited), which borrowed the same amount from Religare Group.
“A partnership firm by the name of M/s M3M India Holdings having partners namely Roop Kumar Bansal, Basant Bansal, Abha Bansal and Pankaj Bansal had received PoC in excess of Rs 500 crore by showing sale of shares of a landowning company M/s RS Infrastructure Pvt Ltd at a grossly inflated value of Rs 726 crore (approximately) to an entity M/s Lowe Realty Pvt Ltd (currently known as Lowe Infra and Wellness Pvt Ltd),” the ED had said in a statement this March.
The statement further said: “ED investigation revealed that value of the land owned by RS Infrastructure Pvt Ltd was deliberately inflated by M/s M3M India Holdings (former shareholder of R.S. Infrastructure) to drain out hefty funds from Lowe Realty Pvt Ltd which borrowed the same amount from Religare Group.”
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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