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The Enforcement Directorate (ED) swooped down on multiple locations of Mumbai realtor Omkar Group in Mumbai and its officials Babulal Verma and Kamal Kishore Gupta in connection with an alleged money laundering case, officials said here on Monday.
"Today's ED raids included two official and two residential premises belonging to Omkar Group, one of the leading builders in Mumbai," an ED official, requesting anonymity, told IANS. Among the premises searched included those belonging to Verma and Gupta, he added. The group is alleged to have misused various permissions given under Mumbai's Slum Rehabilitation Authority's (SRA) housing schemes and also diverted around Rs 450 crore taken by way of loan from Yes Bank. An official from Omkar Group, however, said this evening that the "routine enquiry" by the ED was related to writ petitions by Surana Developers and proxy litigant Pradeep Kadam against the company in the Bombay High Court. The cases pertain to clubbing/de-clubbing of SRA Scheme No 4 at Anand Nagar SRA Cooperative Housing Society in F-North Ward with already approved clubbed Schemes No 1-4 as per the norms of SRA, said the Omkar Group's official spokesperson Sumanth Kumar. "In this, the High Court (order on 30/07/2020) refused any relief to petitioner Surana and asked them to withdraw the same and later (order of 28/08/2020) also asked the proxy litigant Kadam, a non-eligible slum dweller in Anand Nagar SRA, acting on behest of Surana to approach the statutory body governing all SRA schemes, AGRC (Apex Grievance Redressal Committee)," he said. The AGRC had already adjudicated, on 27/11/2020, Kadam's allegations as false, baseless and done with malafide intention, stating that the appeal filed by the appellant is devoid of any substance and merits and reliefs prayed in the present appeal were rejected. All allegations and issues raised by both petitioners were found to be baseless as Omkar has acted as per government's legal rules and regulations, pertaining to the clubbing/de-clubbing, Kumar added. The Omkar Group emphasised that such baseless allegations are an attempt to create confusion and create hurdles in the implementation of SR schemes by approaching various authorities. In the matter raised by the petitioner with regard to a Rs 450 crore loan from Yes Bank, it was availed under banking guidelines as project loan against collateral and utilised for the stated purpose only, it said. "We emphatically state that there are no diversions of any project fund availed by us in any project of the company. There is no injunction or any prohibitory order of Competent Court in this matter which in any manner affects the ongoing development work related to the scheme and our SRA projects, and any stakeholder can access the legal documents in this regard," Kumar said. --IANS qn/aks/vd ( 468 Words) 2021-01-25-20:30:02 (IANS)
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