ED searches realty major DLF in money laundering case against Supertech

The Enforcement Directorate has searched the premises of realty major DLF in Gurugram as part of a money laundering investigation against real estate firm Supertech and its promoters, official sources said on Saturday.

The central agency has recovered some documents during the action that was carried out over the last two days, they said.

The action is linked to the ED investigation against Supertech, the sources said.

An email sent by PTI to DLF did not elicit response. However, company sources said the searches were related to some other parties and did not pertain to DLF.

The ED officials wanted to verify certain documents related to the transaction, which the company complied with, the company sources said.

The ED had arrested Supertech promoter R K or Ram Kishor Arora in this case in June. He is in judicial custody at present.

It had then alleged that Arora was the main controlling person of the group who decided to "divert" crores of funds of investors and homebuyers to various shell companies.

The money laundering case, filed under the criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), stems from as many as 26 FIRs registered by the police departments of Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh against Supertech Limited and its group companies on allegations of cheating 670 homebuyers for an amount of Rs 164 crore.

The ED had said "huge amounts of money running into hundreds of crores were siphoned off through Supertech Group and they failed to adhere to their agreed obligations to provide the possession of flats to customers on time".

It claimed that Supertech Group "siphoned off Rs 440 crore received from customers and homebuyers for purchasing land in Gurugram in 2013-14 at highly inflated prices while their already promised projects in Noida were not completed".

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 also became NPA and were declared "fraud" by banks, it alleged.

Supertech Ltd, which was formed in 1988, has so far delivered around 80,000 apartments, mainly in the Delhi-NCR market. The company is currently developing around 25 projects across National Capital Region (NCR). It is yet to give possession to more than 20,000 customers.

The company has been in crisis since last year.

In August 2022, Supertech suffered a big setback when its nearly 100-metre-tall twin towers -- Apex and Ceyane -- located on Noida Expressway were demolished as per a Supreme Court order that found their construction within Emerald Court premises in violation of norms.

More than 3,700 kg of explosives were used to demolish the two towers.

Arora had then said that the company incurred a loss of about Rs 500 crore, including construction and interest costs, because of the demolition of its twin towers in Noida.

The company suffered another blow last year when the Delhi bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) in March had ordered to initiate the insolvency proceedings against Supertech Ltd over a petition filed by the Union Bank of India for non-payment of dues of around Rs 432 crore.

However, this was challenged by Arora before the NCLAT.