Yes Bank-DHFL fraud case: ED gets builder Sanjay Chhabria’s custody for 7 days
India Today
A special PMLA court on Tuesday granted permission to ED to take custody of Sanjay Chhabria for seven days in the Yes Bank- DHFL fraud case.
A special court under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) on Tuesday granted permission to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to take custody of Sanjay Chhabria, promoter of Radius Group, in Mumbai for seven days.
Chhbaria was earlier arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with the Yes Bank-DHFL case on April 28.
ED had requested before the court to arrest Chhabria and to grant them custody for 10 days.
However, Chhabria’s lawyer, Vibhav Krishna, had opposed the ED’s plea and said that the application of the probe agency does not hold any ground.
Krishna had said that Chhabria had cooperated with the ED as a witness during the course of the investigation and therefore further questioning by the way of ED custody was not necessary.
Krishna further submitted that, "all documents and bank statements were already supplied by Chhabria. If the agency wants, we can again supply the documents to them and if they want, we can give in pen drive as well." Krishna added that the grounds and the reasons are not mentioned in the application to justify the prayer of ED custody for 10 days.Special Judge MG Deshpande, while sifting through evidence, noted that "there is a prima-facie case pointing out generation proceeds of crime, placement, layering and integration thereof to attract Sec 2(1)(u) read with Sec 3 of PMLA. Certainly, the investigating agency must be given an opportunity to thoroughly investigate the offence. Offence of money laundering is serious and if the application is rejected as argued by Krishna, the investigation will not attain finality."However, with regard to Krishna's contention that the application has not mentioned any grounds, the special judge said that it "is not justified because the application has clear mention of the manner in which proceeds of crime are generated and further its trail by way of flow chart describing placement, layering and integration thereof, pointing out involvement of Chhabria patently."
Radius Group has been one of the biggest borrowers of both Yes Bank and DHFL. In February this year, the CBI conducted searches at six locations linked to Sanjay Chhabria and Radius Group in Mumbai and Pune.
