A special court here has observed that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has not taken an “active approach” to begin the trials in money laundering cases that are pending since a long time.
Special judge MG Deshpande had made the observation on February 16 while granting bail to Yes Bank founder Rana Kapoor, his wife Bindu, businessman Gautam Thapar and seven others in a case pertaining to the sale of a property at a prime location in Delhi.
The detailed order was made available on Tuesday.
“It is a fact that ever since this special court for the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) cases has been established not a single such case has been disposed of by judgment. The ED has not shown any active approach to begin the trials of the cases, which have been pending since long,” the court noted, in its order.
Further, the judge said a PMLA case trial is in fact a trial of two cases. It is a very large and lengthy trial as the trial case pertaining to a scheduled offense has to be conducted simultaneously with the trial of the PMLA case, the court added.
The case against Kapoor pertains to in the sale of a property situated on Amrita Shergill Marg in Delhi to a company owned by Kapoor’s wife Bindu, for which a separate FIR had been registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in Mumbai last year .
Later, the ED had filed a money laundering case against Kapoor, Bindu, Gautam Thapar and seven others based on the CBI’s FIR.
The judge, in his order, stated, “I strongly feel that, at the relevant time ED has not exercised their power and arrested the accused.” “In my opinion, the accused is undertrial prisoner in a number of cases and there is no likelihood of his release in the near future. Therefore, the question of his absconding does not arise,” the judge noted.
The court also ruled that no incident of any tempering, pressing the prosecution witness or attempt to abscond has been reported on the part of accused before the court. The judge has made similar observations in bail order of the other accused.
The ED is probing the alleged transaction between Thapar’s Avantha Realty, Kapoor and his wife, and has filed a money laundering case after taking cognisance of the CBI’s FIR. The FIR claims that Kapoor, the then MD and CEO of Yes Bank Limited, had obtained illegal gratification in the form of a property belonging to Avantha Realty Ltd (ARL) at a prime location in Delhi at much less than the market rate after Thapar’s firm was given a loan as well as concessions in existing credit facilities by the lender.
The ED, in its chargesheet, has alleged that Kapoor connived with ARL to wrongfully gain or get transferred a property situated at a prime location in New Delhi to a firm named Bliss Abode, which is owned by his wife Bindu. In order to get the property, Kapoor created a monthly lease-rent agreement between the two group companies of Avantha and got a loan of Rs 400 crore sanctioned from Yes Bank by getting mortgaged the said property to the bank, it alleged.
The ED probe further revealed that by projecting the accounts of the said group of companies as stressed accounts or NPA accounts, the said property was put up for sale by the bank. When the account of ARL group company was on the verge of turning into NPA, Bliss Abode (beneficially owned by Kapoor) offered Rs 378 crore for acquiring the said property. The said property had been valued at Rs 550 crore, the ED said.
The above stated property was further placed as a collateral security to IBHFL by companies owned by Bindu in order to get a loan of Rs 685 crore. Thus, the property which was fraudulently purchased for Rs 378 crore was further put on as a collateral security to get a loan of Rs 685 crore, the probe agency said. Kapoor and his family have benefited to the tune of Rs 307 crore from the proceeds of the crime generated from the fraud/criminal conspiracy, it added.
Thapar is currently in judicial custody in Delhi’s Tihar jail after being arrested in August last year in a related case, while Kapoor is lodged in Taloja jail in neighboring Navi Mumbai after his arrest in the Yes Bank scam in March 2020.
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