Delhi Court Summons ED Director Over Failure To Provide Legible Copies Of Docs Relied Upon To Accused In ₹88 Crore Fraud Case

The Delhi Court recently summoned the Director of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) over the ED's failure to supply legible copies of the Relied Upon Documents (RUDs) of its own Prosecution Complaint (PC) to the accused in connection with ₹88 Crore SEBI-related cheating and fraud case. Special Judge Aparna Swami of Patiala House Courts passed this order, noting that despite repeated adjournments in the 2022 case, ED failed to supply the requisite documents to the Accused persons to enable them to defend themselves. Appearing for the accused, Advocate V. Govinda Ramanan argued that the documents being sought are essential for trial as they form the sole basis for the purported prosecution of the Accused persons in terms of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002. For context, in this case, the ED has filed a Prosecution Complaint against Gajendra Nagpal, his wife Sonia Nagpal, Ram Mohan Gupta and their companies Unickon Securities Pvt Ltd, Unickon Fincap Pvt. Ltd, Unickon Financial Intermediaries Pvt Ltd., Unickon Real Estate Pvt. Ltd. and i360 Staffing and Training Solutions Private Limited in a SEBI-related cheating and fraud case for committing the Money Laundering offence. Essentially, during the investigation, the agency discovered that under the command and control of the accused, Unickon Securities Pvt. Ltd. illegally and unauthorisedly indulged in pledging the clients' securities to various banks and NBFCs to obtain loan funds. As per the Prosecution Complaint, the loans so obtained, along with its clients' funds, were diverted, siphoned off and ultimately utilised for the benefit of its directors and Unickon group companies, which were found to have been engaged in real estate and other business activities. PMLA investigation also revealed that USPL, Gajendra Nagpal and other accused were also beneficiaries of the Proceeds of crime acquired from the criminal activities related to the scheduled offence. Though the SPP for ED failed to appear in court, Dipin Goyal, the Deputy Director for ED, appeared through VC and submitted that the copies supplied to the accused persons were the best copies available with the department. Unimpressed with this submission and considering the delay in providing the legible copies to the accused, the Court deemed it appropriate to direct the Director of ED along with the Investigating Officer to appear in court and give in writing the status of documents to be provided to the accused persons. The matter has now been posted for further hearing on March 26.Advocates V. Govinda Ramanan, Abhik Kumar, Deepak Girdhar, and Siddharth Bajaj appeared for the accused.

Delhi Court Summons ED Director Over Failure To Provide Legible Copies Of Docs Relied Upon To Accused In ₹88 Crore Fraud Case

Sparsh Upadhyay

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