ED ATTACHES PART OF AJL BUILDING WORTH ₹16 CRORE
NEW DELHI : The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday partly attached a nine-storey building worth ~16.38 crore in Mumbai in connection with a probe involving Associated Journals Limited (AJL), publisher of the National Herald newspaper and controlled by the Gandhi family. ED said notices on the action taken under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act had been issued to AJL and Congress leader Motilal Vora, CMD of the company.
NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday partly attached a nine-storey building in Mumbai’s Bandra worth ~16.38 crore in connection with an investigation involving Associated Journals Limited (AJL), publisher of National Herald newspaper and controlled by the Gandhi family.
The ED said it had attached a part of the building that has been established as “proceeds of crime” and that notices on the action taken under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) had been issued to AJL and veteran Congress leader, Motilal Vora, chairman and managing director of the company.
The nine-storey building, located on plot number 2, Survey number 341, near Kala Nagar in Bandra (East), has two basements and a total built-up area of 15,000 square metres; its total value is around ~120 crore.
Former Haryana chief minister, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, is named as an accused in the case and both the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and ED chargesheeted him in 2018 and 2019, respectively, along with Vora.
Senior Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi said, “This is a part of the continuing governmental tirade against National Herald. Since the primary allegations against National Herald are baseless, such attachment orders are equally baseless and untenable.”
“They will be suitably challenged by proper legal recourse. There is also a continuing process of spread of misinformation by authorities in this regard. Government would be far better advised to use its energies to battle Covid-19 instead of such wasteful exercises of energy,” he added.
The ED has alleged that AJL pledged a plot, C-17, Sector 6, Panchkula, Haryana, which was allotted illegally to it, to avail a loan from the Syndicate Bank branch on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg in Delhi to construct the Bandra building. “Thus, the said asset at Mumbai that germinated out of the proceeds of crime has been attached to the extent of ~16.38 crore. Further investigation is going on,” the agency said in a statement. The Panchkula plot has already been attached by the agency. The money laundering probe was based on allegations that the property was allotted to AJL in 1982 but was taken back by the Estate Officer, Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA), a decade later, on October 30, 1992 because AJL did not comply with the conditions of the allotment.
“However, Hooda blatantly misused his official position and dishonestly allotted the said plot afresh in the guise of reallotment to the AJL at original rates plus interest in violation of necessary conditions and policy of HUDA by an order of August 28, 2005 for ~59,39,200,” ED has claimed. The actual value of the property (Panchkula) is about ~64.93 crore, it said. The anti-money laundering probe agency has further stated that Hooda, as the then Haryana CM, caused a wrongful loss to HUDA, and wrongful gain to AJL, by ignoring legal opinion and recommendations of HUDA officers and financial commissioner and principal secretary, Town and Country Planning.
The CBI also filed a charge sheet before a Panchkula court on December 2018 and named Vora and Hooda in connection with the alleged irregularities in the case.