Court grants interim protection from arrest to accused in Rs 2,240 crore money laundering case

A Delhi court today granted interim protection from arrest for a week to around 10 people who are accused of money laundering in a case involving Surya Vinayak Industries Limited where a consortium of banks was allegedly cheated to the tune of Rs 2,240 crore.

Additional Session Judge Satish Arora granted the relief on a personal bond of Rs one lakh to the accused after they appeared before the court in pursuance to summonsed issued earlier and moved applications seeking regular bail.

The applications were, however, opposed by Enforcement Directorate (ED) which sought time to file a detailed reply to their pleas.

Special public prosecutor Nitesh Rana, appearing for the ED, opposed the bail applications and said the agency sought time to argue on the matter.

Those granted the interim relief included Kapildev Aggarwal, Puneet Gupta, C V S Gopal, Ramesh Kumar Sareen, Atul Kumar Aggarwal, Abishek Aggarwal, Vinod Mittal, N K Aggarwal, Peeyush Aggarwal, Sanjeev Aggarwal and Ashwini Sharma.

The ED had on July 18 filed a charge sheet through advocate A R Aditya in the case against a total of 36 accused, including the firm's two directors Sanjay Jain, Rajiv Jain, and Sant Lal Agrawal, who owns hotel Radisson Blu, Dwarka.

In their bail applications, the accused told the court that they were not arrested by the ED during the investigation which suggests that they were not required for the probe.

While Jains are already on bail, Sant Lal Agrawal today moved a plea seeking exemption from personal appearance for the day which was allowed by the court.

Jains were arrested by the probe agency in the matter on August 22 last year and are currently on bail.

The case was registered by the CBI on the complaint of Punjab National Bank (PNB) alleging that the accused, along with others, were using over 100 shell companies for routing and diverting the bank funds.

The firm and the shell companies had no genuine business transactions, the agency alleged.

The company had allegedly diverted bank funds to the tune of Rs 2,240 crore, which resulted in loss to the consortium of banks. Over Rs 300 crore of working capital was also allegedly moved to six companies set abroad, the agency said.

It had alleged that the accused had cheated 17 nationalised and four private banks. Later. The ED also registered a case in this regard.