Court issues notice to ED on Avantha Group promoter's bail plea

Court issues notice to ED on Avantha Group promoter’s bail plea

NEW DELHI: A Special Court of Delhi on Friday issued notice to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on the bail plea of businessman Gautam Thapar arrested in an alleged bank loan fraud case.

Special Judge Sanjeev Aggarwal issued notice on the bail application and directed the Enforcement Directorate to file a reply to the same and supply a copy to the counsels for Gautam Thapar.

The matter is now fixed for reply and arguments on September 27, 2021.

The Enforcement Directorate last month had arrested Avantha Group promoter Gautam Thapar in a money laundering case following searches at multiple locations in Delhi and Mumbai.

The bail application was filed by a team from Karanjawala & Co. Sandeep Kapur, Senior Partner along with Vivek Suri, Rajat Soni, Niharika Karanjawala Misra, Mridul Yadav, Apoorva Pandey, GG Kashyap, Abhimanshu Dhyani, Sidhant Singh and Sahil Modi. The team had briefed Vijay Aggarwal, Advocate to appear on behalf of Gautam Thapar.

Recently Delhi High Court had also sought responses of Enforcement Directorate (ED) on two applications moved by Avantha Group promoter, Gautam Thapar arrested in an alleged bank loan fraud case, challenging the grounds of his arrest and also sought a copy of the Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) registered against him.

According to the ED, an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) was registered against Gautam Thapar, Avantha Realty Ltd., Oyster Buildwell Pvt. Ltd. and others, alleging criminal breach of trust, cheating, criminal conspiracy and forgery for diversion/ misappropriation of public money during the period 2017 to 2019.

Earlier, ED told the Delhi Court that “Investigation revealed that approximately Rs 500.11 crores proceeds of crime, were laundered through Oyster Buildwell Pvt Ltd (OBPL), Jhabua Power Limited (JPL), Jhabua Power Investment Ltd. (JPIL), Avantha Power and Infrastructure Ltd (APIL), Avantha Realty Ltd. (ARL) etc. which are being controlled and beneficially owned directly or indirectly by Gautam Thapar.

ED told the court that the probe disclosed that the same agreements were made by these entities to fraudulently obtain huge amounts running into more than Rs 500 crores from Yes Bank and further by different modes of layering the tainted amount was laundered and the loan account thus turned NPA causing a loss of huge public money.