News: Gurugram: Ambience Mall owner booked for Rs 289 crore fraud-04-09-2021
NEW DELHI: A month after Enforcement Directorate arrested Raj Singh Gehlot, owner of Ambience Mall in Gurugram, on money laundering charges, Central Bureau of Investigation has booked him and two other directors of his firm for allegedly siphoning off Rs 289 crore from J&K Bank.
Apart from Gehlot, CBI has also charged other directors of his firm, Aman Hospitality Pvt Ltd, and yet to be identified bank officials with conspiring to defraud the bank. According to the FIR, the Anti-Corruption Bureau has verified the allegations that officials of J&K Bank's Ansal Plaza branch in New Delhi had issued hundreds of crores of rupees in loans to Aman Hospitality. Later, with the connivance of bank officials, the loan was declared a non-performing asset to allegedly facilitate a one-time settlement.
Aman Hospitality, officials said, had obtained a term loan of Rs 227 crore and Rs 15 crore as bank guarantee against the mortgage of a project plot of 20,000 square metres, which included building a five-star hotel in east Delhi’s Shahdara.
J&K Bank officials allegedly connived with Gehlot and Aman Hospitality promoter-directors Dayanand Singh and Aman Gehlot, in the fraud. “J&K Bank illegally and with mala fide intentions settled the loan amount for Rs 128.9 crore against the outstanding amount of Rs 289.3 crore, even less than the principal amount of Rs 261.5 crore,” disclosed an official.
During verification, it became clear that J&K Bank had executed a dubious deal that conferred huge pecuniary benefits to the promoters without taking recourse to appropriate proceedings under the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act, 2002, causing a huge loss to the exchequer.
“In furtherance of a well-knit conspiracy hatched by the promoter-directors of the company with the J&K Bank authorities, i.e. despite the one-time settlement which is illegal and to the disadvantage of the bank, the authorities failed to recover a single penny from the company till date and the settlement is a mere eye wash,” the FIR alleges.
Last August, too, the Central Bureau of Investigation had conducted searches after filing an FIR on the direction of the Punjab and Haryana High Court after allegations that the company had built a mall illegally on 18.9 acres by blatantly flouting the building by-laws and other statutory provisions.
