ED raids AHPL, Ambience group companies in bank fraud case

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, July 31

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday said it had conducted searches at seven different premises in the national capital under provisions of the PMLA in connection with a bank fraud case, which was originally registered by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) of Jammu and Kashmir.

According to ED officials, these searches were conducted at the office premises of Aman Hospitality Private Limited (AHPL), other companies of the Ambience group and the residential premises of Directors Raj Singh Gehlot, Dayanand Singh, Mohan Singh Gehlot and their associates.

They said during the course of searches, Indian currency amounting to Rs 16 lakh and foreign currencies worth 16,120 Euros, 5,115 British Pounds and USD 6,302 (equivalent to around Rs 24 lakh) were seized from the residence of Raj Singh Gehlot, while several incriminating documents and digital pieces of evidence were taken into possession.

The officials said the ED took up the case after Jammu and Kashmir ACB registered a case against for defrauding a consortium of banks AHPL and its Directors to look into money laundering aspect of the proceeds of the alleged crime. The accused took a loan for the construction and development of the Five Star ‘Leela Ambience Convention Hotel’ at 1, CBD, Maharaj Surajmal Road, Near Yamuna Sports Complex in Delhi.

The ED officials said the investigation revealed that a huge part of the loan amount of more than Rs 800 crore, which was sanctioned by a consortium of banks for the hotel project, was siphoned off by AHPL and Raj Singh Gehlot and his associates through a web of companies owned and controlled by them.

The employees of Ambience Group and the associates of Raj Singh Gehlot were made the directors and proprietors of these companies and he was the ‘authorised signatory’ in many of these companies, the ED alleged.