A special court under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) on Tuesday remanded builder Avinash Bhosale in the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) custody after he was arrested by the agency and produced before the court in connection with the Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Ltd (DHFL) - Yes Bank case.
Bhosale, ABIL group chairman, had been arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) earlier and had been in judicial custody of the CBI court in the case regarding the same fraud.
The CBI court had directed on receiving a letter from the PMLA court, that Bhosale be handed over to ED officers to be produced before the PMLA court.
Seeking the builder’s custody for 14 days, the ED had submitted in its remand report that his custodial interrogation is necessary to unearth the trail of money laundered in the case at his hands.
The ED alleged that Yes Bank disbursed Rs. 3,983 crore to DHFL and the latter transferred Rs. 2,317 to another builder Sanjay Chhabria’s Radius Group. Radius Group, the agency alleges, transferred Rs. 267 crores to Nibodh Realty Ltd of Bhosale. It sought his custody to unearth the layering of money. Advocate Vijay Aggarwal along with advocate Rahul Agarwal on behalf of Wadia Ghandy and Co. opposed the builder’s custodial interrogation by the agency.
Special Judge MG Deshpande said in the order while granting ED his custody, that it has to be noted that the offence alleged against him is a grave economic offence of money laundering and he is one of the important links in the chain of laundering. Therefore, that sufficient time has to be granted to the ED and its plea for his custody cannot be rejected.
