ED case against restaurateur
NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has registered a money laundering case against businessman and restauranteur Navneet Kalra, who was arrested by Delhi Police on Sunday evening for allegedly hoarding oxygen concentrators at three of his restaurants and selling them at inflated prices, ED officials said on Wednesday. The money laundering probe will lead to the agency looking at any suspicious financial transactions made by Kalra in the past, ED officers said. Kalra was arrested from a farmhouse in Gurugram on Sunday even as lawyers were trying to obtain anticipatory bail for him from the Delhi high court through the week. Police were on the lookout for him since the recovery of 524 oxygen concentrators from three of his restaurants – Khan Chacha, Town Hall and Nege & Ju – and from the office of Matrix Cellular on May 7. Kalra is alleged to have purchased the concentrators from Matrix Cellular which had imported them. As part of its probe under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), ED will look into the money trail of the sale and purchase of oxygen concentrators, whether they were being given to Covid-19 patients and caregivers at exorbitant prices, and to ascertain if others were involved, said an ED officer who asked not to be named. A second ED officer said they have already taken all case documents from the police and a probe has begun after registering an ECIR (Enforcement Case
Information Report) – equivalent to an FIR – a few days ago.
Delhi Police claims that it has evidence to prove concentrators, which were bought for ₹14,000 to ₹15,000, were being sold for prices upwards of ₹75,000.
Demand for oxygen concentrators swelled during the fourth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in the Capital with many hospitals running out of medical oxygen as the number of critically ill patients rose. They can derive 80-90% pure oxygen from ambient air, were also a crucial part of supplies and aid provided by many foreign countries to India.
Four employees of Matrix Cellular Company, including its CEO and vice-president, were also arrested in this case by the police. They were, however, granted bail by the court.
The high court while granting bail to the four said it was unable to understand the offence they had committed, since the terms that they were charged under weren’t defined by the Acts being considered by the court.
A lawyer, who represented Kalra in the HC, refused to comment saying they have not been told by the ED about the probe. Meanwhile, police on Wednesday said Kalra was “evasive” and “non-cooperative” with the probe team during three days of custodial interrogation. On Wednesday, the team took Kalra to his in-laws’ farmhouse in Gurugram for a search to recover “more evidence”. However, no fresh evidence related to the case was seized from the farmhouse unlike Tuesday when similar searches at his restaurants, his optical shop, investigators said.