New Delhi:
The ED has attached 3,850 acres of land worth Rs 207 crore in various cities of Tamil Nadu as part of a money-laundering probe against a group of firms that allegedly cheated investors in the guise of land allotment, the central agency said on Monday.
A total of 1,081 parcels of land, located in Madurai, Ramanathapuram and Chennai and registered in the name of Disc Assets Lead India Limited, Eagles Eye Real Estates, Meadow Realtors and key executives of these companies, have been provisionally attached under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
The total value of these immovable properties spread across 3,850 acres is Rs 207 crore.
The Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) case against the group and its promoters stems from an Economic Offences Wing FIR of the Tamil Nadu police that alleged that the accused “collected money in installments from the public, residing in various parts of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, promising them lands in return”.
The agency said its probe found that the “directors of the company (Disc Assets) had floated some other entities like Dal Marketing Solutions Private Limited and Aiyan Marketing Solutions Private Limited to collect money from the public on behalf of Disc Assets Lead India Limited to circumvent the legal impediments of the SEBI Act”.
“The total money collected by this company is about Rs 1,273 crore,” the ED said in a statement.
The amount collected from the depositors, it claimed, was “utilised” in the purchase of immovable properties in Tamil Nadu under the name of the company, its directors and other unrelated entities.
“Major portion of the collected amount was siphoned off by the directors of the accused company through entities which were floated by them with their close relatives as directors or partners,” the agency alleged.
The accused “cheated” the depositors by neither allotting them land nor returning their money, it said.
Directors and those occupying key managerial positions in the firm such as N Umashankar alias N M Umasangarr, N Arun Kumar alias N Arun, V Janarthanan and A Saravana Kumar were earlier arrested under money-laundering charges.
