Collateral purchased after loan: ED attaches Rs 2 crore property for bank fraud

The Ahmedabad Zonal Office of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday said that it had on Monday provisionally attached immovable properties having book value of Rs 2 crore (present market value is approximately Rs 4 crore) in an investigation related to a bank fraud case against Dhananjay V Parikh, proprietor of Raymark Remedies, and others, under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

The ED said it had initiated its investigation on the basis of an FIR registered by the CBI, ACB, Gandhinagar under various sections of the IPC and the Prevention of Corruption Act against Parikh and others for criminal conspiracy to defraud the Bank of Maharashtra by diverting the sanctioned cash credit facility of Rs 2 crore to cash credit (CC) the bank account of Raymark Remedies and utilising it for the purposes other than it was lent for. CC is a short-term loan.

The ED statement said that its investigation revealed that the collateral security in the form of immovable properties that was given to the Bank of Maharashtra for sanction of the aforesaid CC facility of Rs 2 crore was acquired on a later date of March 29, 2014, by Parikh after the said CC limit was availed by him.

The investigation also revealed that by fraudulently showing the attached immovable properties as collateral security to the bank, Parikh availed the CC facility on March 13, 2014, and routed this money through a number of bank accounts, using the accounts of non-existent firms of his accomplishes to repay some of his outstanding loans, and that a part was used to purchase the said immovable properties, thereby revealing these attached properties as acquired directly from Proceeds of Crime. Further investigation is underway.