Pearls scam: CBI to send Letters Rogatory to Australia

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CBI will soon send judicial request to Australia to seek details of Pearls Group's activities there as it suspects Rs 670 crore collected from public for developing land and forests has been diverted to that country.
Agency sources said Pearls Group Chief Nirmal Singh Bhangoo was allegedly running real estate business -- portable housing projects -- in the name of his relatives in Australia and also reportedly owned a hotel on Gold Coast.
The sources said the agency is probing business dealings of Bhangoo through which public money might have been diverted, including TV channel P7 News, a joint venture with Australian company Global Road Technologies (GRT) International and PHT LifeStyle.

GRT is based somewhere between Gold Coast and Brisbane and had entered into a joint venture with Pearls Group, which is facing probe here for allegedly duping over five crore investors to the tune of Rs 45,000 crore.
They said the alleged diversion of funds to Australia also took place through Global Road Technologies.
Directors of Pearls Group companies PACL and PGF allegedly collected funds from people in the garb of sale of land and forests to them and "deliberately and dishonestly diverted" funds to Australia without informing the investors, the sources said.

The agency will soon be sending Letters Rogatory to Australia seeking information about his business interests, companies suspected to be working with him, assets etc.

Letters Rogatory is a document issued by a court of a sovereign country to a court in another nation seeking legal assistance in probing a crime.
They said, if needed, LRs will also be sent to Dubai in this connection as it is investigating the diversion of some funds there.
During the probe in the last two years, CBI has found 1,300 bank accounts of the suspect company, its directors, and associated firms, they said, adding the agency has frozen assets (mostly Fixed Deposit receipts) to the tune of Rs 280 crore and an additional Rs 108 crore has been deposited with the Delhi High Court.

They said the agency has managed to seize 20,000 documents related to properties whose purchase value was estimated at Rs 5,000 crore.
Bhangoo, CMD of Pearls Golden Forest Ltd (PGF) and ex-Chairman of Pearls Australasia Pty Limited, along with Sukhdev Singh, MD and Promoter-Director of Pearls Agrotech Corporation Ltd (PACL), Gurmeet Singh, Executive Director (Finance) and Subrata Bhattacharya, ED in the PGF/PACL were arrested by CBI in connection with the scam.