New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) said on Wednesday that R.K. Arora, the Promoter-Director of real estate firm Supertech Limited, diverted hundreds of crores of rupees collected from homebuyers and investors to shell companies instead of completing projects.
Arora was arrested by the ED on charges of money laundering.
The ED said that the custodial interrogation of Arora had become necessary for investigation as he was avoiding questions and had been giving misleading replies.
Arora was produced before a special PMLA court on Wednesday, which remanded him to ED custody till July 10.
The ED initiated PMLA investigation based on numerous FIRs registered against Supertech Group by its prospective homebuyers.
“The investigation conducted by ED showed that huge amounts of money running to hundreds of crores were siphoned off through Supertech Group, which failed to adhere to its agreed obligations to provide the possession of the flats to its customers on time,” the ED said.
The ED probe showed that in one of the transactions, Supertech Group siphoned Rs 440 crore received from homebuyers for purchasing land in Gurugram in 2013-14 at highly-inflated prices, while its already promised projects in Noida were not completed by that time.
A new project was launched on this newly-acquired land and further advance was collected from hundreds of homebuyers and loans were taken from banks/NBFCs, which became NPAs and were declared fraud by the banks.
Similarly, Rs 154 crore was misappropriated by Supertech for acquiring land in another shell company in the same time period.
Also, Rs 40 crore was siphoned off to another shell company and land was purchased in the name of it in Delhi. In such a manner, funds were diverted to shell companies instead of completing its projects, which in fact are not completed till date even in 2023.
During this period, Arora was the main decision-making authority in Supertech Group.
(IANS)
