The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on August 4 summoned Shiv Sena’s member of parliament Sanjay Raut’s wife Varsha to record her statement in a money laundering case pertaining to the redevelopment of the Patra Chawl in Mumbai’s Goregaon in 2018.
On August 4, a special prevention of money laundering act (PMLA) court extended Mr. Raut’s ED’s custody till August 8 in the same case. He was arrested on August 1 after being questioned for nine hours by the central agency.
ED’s counsel Hiten Venegavkar had informed the court that Mr. Raut has been evasive in his replies and his custody is needed to investigate details of bank accounts of unrelated people to whom money was transferred from his wife’s account. He added the entire money trail is found to be of ₹1.08 crore with an additional ₹1.17 crore.
The court recorded in its order, “It is a fact that the money trail of ₹1.17 crore and ₹1.08 crore did not come before the court. Some more amount has been revealed by ED along with bank statements, I am of the opinion that there is legitimate progress in investigation and certain facts need to be probed by summoning witnesses and confronting the accused.”
As per ED, “during the investigation into several banks of Mr. Raut, it was revealed that ₹1.08 crore was reflected in his wife Varsha’s account. This trail of money is a fresh trail and it needs to be investigated. The persons have been summoned and documents have been called for by respective banks.”
Senior advocate Manoj Mohite appearing for Mr. Raut said, a thorough investigation has already been carried out and his statement has been recorded before his arrest. He said hardly any investigation has been conducted since Mr. Raut was taken into custody and the same allegations are made again and again. He went on to say all this is politically motivated and there is no need for custodial interrogation.
It is alleged by the ED that the developers, one of them is a close associate of Mr. Raut fraudulently made ₹1,039.79 crore from this scheme and Mr. Raut also benefited from the same.
The case dates back to March 2018 when a First Information Report was registered under the provision of prevention of money laundering act against M/s Guru Ashish Construction, Housing Development and Infrastructure Limited’s (HDIL) promoters Rakesh and Sarang Wadhwan on basis of complaint filed by an executive engineer of Maharashtra Housing and Area Development (MHADA).
According to the ED, M/s Guru Ashish Construction was entrusted with the development of Patra chawl project for rehabilitation of 672 tenants in 47 acres of land. During the relevant time the Wadhawan brothers and Pravin Raut were the directors of M/s Guru Ashish Construction.
As per the agreement, the developer was to provide flats to the tenants and develop flats for MHADA and thereafter the remaining area to be sold by the developer. ED contends the directors of M/s Guru Ashish Constructions misled MHADA and managed to sell the floor space index to nine developers and collected approximately ₹901.79 crore without constructing the rehab portion for 672 displaced tenants and MHADA portion.
