Wednesday, December 5, 2018

SC: Attach, sell Amrapali bldgs, benami flats

The SC on Wednesday ordered immediate attachment of 28 properties of Amrapali Group, including a five-star hotel and corporate offices, calling its promoters the “worst kind of cheaters”, who misled the court on alleged misuse of buyers’ money. It also ordered that benami properties in the group’s housing projects be attached as well. The court added that the process for sale of the properties be initiated. 
The SC on Wednesday ordered immediate attachment of 28 properties of Amrapali Group, including malls, a five-star hotel, a hospital and corporate offices, calling its promoters the “worst kind of cheaters” and “biggest liars” who misled the court by filing “false affidavit” on alleged misuse of homebuyers’ money.
The court also asked the Debt Recovery Tribunal to initiate the process to sell the properties. The court orders came after the group admitted that it had diverted Rs 3,000 crore of homebuyers’ money and failed to disclose all transactions. The apex court gave one last opportunity to the promoters and their families to return homebuyers’ money by December 10 and asked them to explain the diversion of money.
Taking note of the voluminous affidavit of the group, which runs into hundreds of pages, a bench of Justices Arun Mishra and U U Lalit expressed dissatisfaction and said it failed to give details of diversion of funds and its beneficiaries. It also asked why the company revealed diversion of funds only up to March 2015 while investments made in construction of housing projects and other details were up to 2018. “We are not getting any idea on how the money was transferred and whether it was approved by the board of directors,” the bench said and questioned the veracity of financial statements of the group.
SC-appointed forensic auditors, Ravi Bhatia and Pawan Kumar Aggarwal, who were entrusted with the task of probing the financial irregularities also expressed surprise over the documents placed by the group and said they are seeing such documents for the first time and not a single figure matched with bank statements.
Aggarwal told the bench that according to the documents, the promoters did not invest even one rupee and the vast empire was created out of homebuyers’ money.

The SC asked the group to disclose the name of the person who prepared the documents so that he could be held liable for action if it proved to be false. “First, tell me the name of the person who is responsible for the document. We want to examine him right now,” the bench said. The group preferred to remain silent and did not disclose the name but later told the court that five people, including two chartered accountants, had prepared the report and furnished their names.

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