SC refuses to release Amrapali Group CMD, directors to be with family on Diwali

Satya Prakash
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, October 31

Amrapali Group CMD Anil Sharma and two other directors will have to celebrate Diwali under police custody as the Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed their plea to release them from a Noida hotel - where they have been kept under police surveillance on the court's orders.

"There is no question of Holi and Diwali," said a Bench of Justice Arun Mishra and Justice UU Lalit after their counsel requested the court to release them to be with their family on the festival of lights.

They have been ordered to be lodged in a hotel in Sector 62 of Noida and help the forensic auditors prepare catalogues of documents relating to 46 companies of the group between 8 am and 6 pm.

The Bench - which is seized of petitions filed by Amrapali homebuyers - made it clear to them that until and unless all the documents are submitted to the forensic auditors and tallied with the computers seized, there was no question of allowing them to go home.

The Bench also directed the banks to submit statement of accounts of all the 46 companies of the Amrapali Group and their 92 directors to the forensic auditors by November 12 and posted the matter for further hearing on November 13 at 2 pm.

The Bench directed the Amrapali Group to disclose the names of all the companies with which it had any kind of transactions after forensic auditors pointed out that there may be a web of more than 200-250 such firms where homebuyers' money was transferred.

The two forensic auditors, appointed by the court to look into the affairs of Amrapali Group said besides 47 sister companies, they stumbled upon 31 companies whose names were never disclosed by the embattled real estate firm.

There may be a case of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), as large amount of money was transferred to a multinational company based in Mauritius, it was told.

The Bench questioned Amrapali Group CFO Chander Wadhwa as to how a group company paid his Income Tax amounting to Rs 2 crore, when he was earning only Rs 50,000 per month.

It said money of innocent buyers could not be misused like this and asked the Mauritius-based JP Morgan company to file its account statement with regard to the transaction with the Amrapali Group.

The counsel for J P Morgan said they had invested more than Rs 100 crore in the real estate business of Amrapali Group and they had a claim of Rs 168 crore from the reality firm.

The top court had on Friday grilled the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and internal auditors of Amrapali Group over alleged diversion of money collected from home buyers' and ordered that Sharma and two other directors  would not be freed. It also grilled Amrapli over diversion of funds to Singapore and Mauritius.

The Bench was told that 34 hearing had taken place so far but nothing concrete had come out.

Earlier the top court zeroed in on 23 "dummy companies", which the real estate Group claimed to be created as special purpose vehicles (SPVs), and sought their details of incorporation and bank statements. It had asked Amrapali Group to handover all the laptops, computers and hard-drives used by the company since 2008 to the forensic auditors appointed by the court to audit the affairs of the embattled real estate company.