Amrapali case: ED to attach JP Morgan's assets

The Supreme Court asked the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Monday to attach Indian properties of JP Morgan, which engaged in a transaction with the now-defunct Amrapali Group to allegedly siphon off home buyers' money in violation of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) and FDI norms.

The ED said it had prima facie found violations of FEMA norms by the US-based JP Morgan and that a complaint in this regard was lodged.

The Supreme Court also allowed the ED to take into custody the defunct group's CMD, Anil Kumar Sharma, and two other directors, Shiv Priya and Ajay Kumar, who are behind bars on the top court's order, for interrogation as regards alleged money-laundering offences.

It said the central agency could take them into custody immediately and once their interrogation was over, they could be sent back to a prison here.

According to the share subscription agreement between JP Morgan and Amrapali Group, the US-based firm had invested Rs 85 crore on October 20, 2010 to have a preferential claim on profits in the ratio of 75 per cent to JP Morgan and 25 per cent to the promoters of Amrapali Homes Project Private Limited and Ultra Home.

Later, the same number of shares was bought back from JP Morgan for

Rs 140 crore by two companies -M/s Neelkanth and M/s Rudraksha -- owned by a peon and an office boy of Amrapali's statutory auditor Anil Mittal.

A bench of justices Arun Mishra and U U Lalit was told by ED Joint Director Rajeshwar Singh, who is supervising the probe against JP Morgan, that the MNC remitted the money back to the United States.

"They (JP Morgan) have a lot of properties in India. We want you to attach their office or corporate properties of a like amount. Then they will come running to us and we will see to it," the bench said.