ED again gets custody of DHFL chief in Iqbal Mirchi case

A special court on Monday again remanded Kapil Wadhawan, chairman and MD of Dewan Housing Finance (DHFL), to the custody of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) till February 7 in connection with a money laundering case also involving gangster Iqbal Mirchi.

Wadhawan (46) was arrested on January 27 by the ED under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) as he was allegedly not cooperating in the probe and was "untrustworthy" in his dealings and statements made to the agency.

After his arrest, he was produced before a special PMLA court which sent him in the ED's custody for two days and later extended his remand till January 31.

He was admitted to the state-run J J Hospital here on January 31 due to ill health following which the special court sent him to judicial custody till February 3.

Wadhawan was on Monday produced before the court where the ED again sought his custody for a period of five days for interrogation.

The court accepted the request and remanded Wadhawan to the ED's custody till February 7.

According to the ED, Kapil Wadhawan was instrumental in siphoning off huge amounts of money as part of an illegal deal between Mirchi, alias Iqbal Memon, and the Wadhawans, DHFL's promoters.

The agency claims that in 2010, the Wadhawans executed a deal with Mirchi to purchase the three properties owned by the gangster in central Mumbai.

According to the ED, a sum of Rs 12,773 crore was siphoned out of DHFL fraudulently under the pretext of providing loan to one lakh fictitious individual customers using 79 paper companies.

A part of this loan was used to make payments to Mirchi, who died in 2013 in London, it said.

Mirchi's Mumbai properties have been called as proceeds of crime by the ED. His three properties were sold to Sunblink Real Estate Pvt Ltd, a company linked to the Wadhawan brothers, Kapil and Dheeraj, the central agency said.

The agency has alleged Kapil Wadhawan "diverted" funds from DHFL to shell companies and later these dubious entities got amalgamated with Sunblink to "cover" alleged diversion of loans acquired from the housing finance firm.

The ED has filed a criminal case against Mirchi, his family members and others to probe money laundering charges for alleged illegal dealings in purchase and sale of costly real estate assets in Mumbai.

Mirchi was alleged to be the right hand man of global terrorist Dawood Ibrahim in drug trafficking and extortion crimes.