Fake agreements raked in Rs 169-cr proceeds: ED

Bhartesh Singh Thakur

Tribune News Service

Panchkula, December 10

The investigation into the Manesar land scam by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has brought out that a builder, Atul Bansal, had employed a unique modus operandi of turning black money into white.

A special ED court has issued bailable warrants against him for December 15.

As per the ED, a notification to acquire 912 acres and 7 marlas in Manesar, Lakhnaula and Naurangpur villages of Gurugram district was issued under Section 4 of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, on August 27, 2004.

Fearing acquisition by the government at meagre rates, landowners, in haste, sold the land at “throwaway” rates of Rs20 lakh to Rs25 lakh per acre to builders.

In spite of knowing that the state government had expressed its willingness to acquire the land, Bansal, who is an MD of ABWIL, had purchased 239 acres. He was one of the leading purchasers.

He had started purchasing the land from December 16, 2005. On December 28, 2006, he had applied for a licence for 190 acres by mentioning ABWIL and its 15 group companies as applicants.

The Director Town and Country Planning (DTCP) did not examine the fact that he did not have the authorisation to apply on behalf of the companies. He, however, got six licences.

As it turned out, the “Director of Industries” had, on August 24, 2007, issued an order for releasing the land “in violation of government policy, in favour of the builders, their companies and agents, instead of the original land owners”.

A Town and Country Planning official had submitted before the ED that there was a recommendation that applications by the ABWIL for the grant of licence should be rejected. But the applications were not rejected.

The ED says the ABWIL and its associate companies got three licences for Rs7.02 crore and spent Rs11.82 crore on the acquisition. They sold the licences to other firms for Rs188.91 crore. The profit was Rs169.25 crore, which later turned out to be “proceeds of crime” as these had been earned after acquiring the notified land and getting licences in connivance with public servants, the ED said.

To hide the profit, the ABWIL and its group of companies entered into “false/fabricated ‘Agreements to Sell’ in respect of different land portions to different entities; procured negligible advances from them in cash and took cheques as advance in view of the land to be sold out, but the cheques were never presented to banks for clearing purposes”.

Later, the Agreements to Sell were cancelled and new “Cancellation-Cum-Settlement Agreements” were prepared. Hence, the ABWIL demanded compensation to the extent of six to seven times the amount mentioned in the Agreements to Sell. “The compensation was credited to bank accounts of the entities,” the ED said.

According to the ED, all agreements were fake.

The ED said the investigation had also brought out that the ABWIL had executed Agreements to Sell with 21 entities on October 19, 2007. A few months later in 2018, it had struck a deal with DLF for the same land.

On the receipt of Rs125 crore from DLF, the ABWIL and its associate companies hatched a conspiracy to pass off these funds as compensation received on account of cancellation of Agreements to Sell. Later, they got the money back in the form of cash from respective entities, the ED said.