A Delhi court on Saturday took cognisance of a charge sheet by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) against businessman and Avantha Group of companies promoter Gautam Thapar and 20 others in connection with Rs 500 crore money laundering case. Special judge Sanjeev Aggarwal summoned the accused persons and companies on five dates from October 20 to November 30, noting that the presence of such a large number of accused persons and their counsels on a single date may not be conducive for adhering to the Covid SOPs.
“I hereby take cognisance of offence as there are sufficient grounds to proceed against the accused persons arraigned in the present complaint,” the judge said. The final report, filed by ED’s Special Public Prosecutor N K Matta, alleged that the accused committed criminal breach of trust, cheating, criminal conspiracy and forgery for diversion and misappropriation of the public money from 2017 to 2019 and caused loss to the tune of Rs 466.51 crore to YES Bank.
Thapar, 60, was arrested under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) on August 3 after the agency carried out raids against him and his linked businesses in Delhi and Mumbai. He is currently in judicial custody.
The ED was probing an alleged transaction between his company Avantha Realty, Yes Bank co-founder Rana Kapoor and his wife, who are already being investigated under the PMLA by the agency. The case of money laundering was filed by the ED after taking cognisance of an FIR lodged by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
The FIR lodged by the CBI alleged that Rana Kapoor, then MD and CEO of Yes Bank Limited, obtained illegal gratification in the form of a property in a prime location in Delhi, at much less than the realisable market value, belonging to Avantha Reality Ltd for sanction of a loan to ARL and for extending concessions, relaxations and waivers in the already existing credit facilities provided to Avantha Group companies and for advancing new and additional loans to them. The CBI had last year booked Kapoor and his wife Bindu for allegedly obtaining a bribe of Rs 307 crore through the purchase of a bungalow in a posh Delhi area from a realty firm at half the market price and facilitating around Rs 1,900 crore bank loans to it in return.
The CBI suspected that the discounted transaction for the 1.2 acre-bungalow on Amrita Shergill Marg in Delhi was a gratification to Kapoor through the company Bliss Abode Pvt Ltd in return for non-realisation of over Rs 1,900 crore in loans from Yes Bank to Avantha Realty and group companies. In June, 2021 the CBI had booked Thapar and others in a fresh case of fraud of Rs 2,435 crore in the State Bank of India (SBI) and other banks to probe an alleged fraud case at the CG Power and Industrial Solutions.
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