Nagpur, Feb 26 (IANS) The Enforcement Directorate (ED)’s attached immovable properties worth Rs 3.35 crore in Nagpur belonging to a couple, who cheated two investors on the promise of selling a property and arranging loan from a foreign institution, an official said on Thursday.

The attached assets include three commercial shops and two lands admeasuring total area of 10.37 acre are owned by Sachin Shatrugha Pandey and his family members, the ED’s Nagpur Sub-Zonal Office said.

The properties were provisionally attached under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.

The ED initiated the investigation on the basis of FIRs registered with Dhantoli and Sitaburdi Police Stations of Nagpur under various sections of the IPC, 1860, against Pandey and his associates who were involved in criminal activities, a statement said.

The ED investigation established that the accused Pandey and his wife Khushi, despite no longer having any stake in the two properties in Nagpur, had wilfully entered into an agreement with complainant Amit Kothari for the sale of the said aforesaid properties for Rs 2.5 crore and received Rs 2.2 crore in cash.

Later, due to non-execution of deed effecting transfer of the said properties in favour of complainant, the accused again entered into a cancellation agreement with the complainant, undertaking to return the money to the complainant by March 31, 2013, the ED statement said.

However, the accused deliberately did not adhere to the terms of the agreement and failed to return Rs 2.2 crore to the complainant and misappropriated the same for personal gains sustaining wrongful loss to the complainant, the central probe agency said.

In another matter, investigation established that Pandey and his associates induced Chandraprakash Wadhwani that they would arrange a loan of Rs 18 crore from a foreign institution without any security or credit by way of Standby Letter of Credit (SBLC) through his company Luft International and took an amount of Rs 1.2 crore in cash from the complainant in the name of margin money.

The accused neither arranged such promised loan amounts to the complainant nor returned his money taken in the guise of margin money and misappropriated Rs 1.2 crore for personal gains sustaining wrongful loss to the complainant, the ED added.

“The investigation conducted under PMLA, 2002, has established that Pandey is a habitual offender, who not only cheated the complainants herein but many more innocent persons by way of several kind of false promises,” the ED statement said.

“Investigation further established that the funds received by Pandey and his associates were partly placed and layered in several bank accounts maintained in their names as well as in the names of their family members and entities,” the ED said

“From these bank accounts, an amount of Rs 90 lakh was diverted towards the purchase of residential flats in the project of Pioneer Group, Rs 20 lakh in the bank accounts of his associates Swarnim Jaykumar Dixit for its further utilisation, and more than Rs 70 lakh used to cover routine personal expenditures,” the central probe agency added.

The investigation established that the rest of the cash has partly been used in medical treatment of his wife accused Khushi conducted in India and abroad and partly used to acquire another immovable property, the ED said.

–IANS

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