Roop Kumar Bansal, a director of Gurugram-based realty company M3M, has been arrested in a money laundering case linked to real estate firm IREO, the Enforcement Directorate said on Friday.
Bansal was taken into custody under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) on Thursday and he was later produced in a special court in Panchkula in Haryana which sent him to seven-day ED custody, the agency said in a statement.
The arrest, it said, was made in connection with the investigation being done against IREO and M3M groups for “diverting, siphoning off and misappropriating funds of investors and customers”.
“The custody of Roop Kumar Bansal became necessary for investigation and he has been avoiding investigation and not responding to summons issued by ED on multiple occasions,” it said.
On June 1, the ED carried out raids against the M3M group and its directors as well as against IREO in Delhi and Gurugram.
It later alleged in a press statement that the owners, controllers and promoters of the M3M group -- Basant Bansal, Roop Kumar Bansal, Pankaj Bansal -- and other key persons deliberately avoided investigations during the raids.
M3M directors, including Bansal, had filed a petition in the Delhi High Court following the searches to quash the ED case and summons issued to them, saying they have not indulged in any wrongdoing, sources indicated.
The agency alleged “huge amount of money running into hundreds of crores were siphoned off through the M3M group” in this case.
In one of the transactions, the M3M group received about Rs 400 crore from IREO through several shell companies in multiple layers, it said.
“The transactions were shown in books of IREO as payments towards development rights. The land was owned by M3M group and the market value of the land was around Rs 4 crore.”
“M3M group initially sold the development rights of the said land to five shell companies for a payment of Rs 10 crore and it was claimed that these companies are unrelated,” it said.
However, it said, probe found that the five shell companies were operated by the M3M group.