The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Monday said it has attached land and residential houses worth more than Rs 137 crore in Bengaluru as part of a money-laundering probe linked to a case for allegedly duping investors through Ponzi investment scheme by fraudulently promising them affordable flats in the metropolis.
The assets are held in the name of Dreamz Infra India Limited, its managing director (MD) Disha Choudhary, TGS Constructions Private Limited, its MD Mandeep Kaur and others, the ED said in a statement. A provisional order for seizing 16 immovable properties was issued under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) on June 27, the agency said in its statement.
The total worth of these assets is Rs 137.6 crore, it further said. The agency filed a money-laundering case against the accused, including a company called Gruha Kalyan and Sachin Naik alias Yogesh, after taking cognisance of 125 FIRs registered against them. The accused "duped" the public by taking huge amounts of money from them, promising affordable apartments in and around Bengaluru, the agency said."From 2011-12 to 2016-17, the accused entities collected more than Rs 722 crore from more than 10,299 customers and misappropriated the said funds for their own benefits and deceived/cheated the gullible customers without handing over the flats and without refunding the deposit amounts to them," the ED said. The accused neither returned the money to the depositors nor handed over the apartments to them and "threatened" the customers with dire consequences when they asked about it, the agency alleged. The ED said the main accused — Sachin Naik, Disha Choudhary, Mandeep Kaur and others — "layered" the depositors' money into various bank accounts and subsequently withdrew it in cash and "diverted" it to other unrelated businesses.
The ED further alleged that the accused spent these funds for their "personal benefits like making Bollywood movies, investing in IPL teams.