ED arrests realty firm M3M’s director in money laundering case

Roop Kumar Bansal of M3M was taken into custody under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) Thursday and produced in a special court in Haryana’s Panchkula. The court sent him to ED custody for seven days, the agency said in a statement.

The agency alleged that IREO had siphoned hundreds of crores to the M3M group. “In one of the transactions, the M3M group received about Rs 400 crore from IREO through several shell companies in multiple layers,” the spokesperson said.

“The transactions were shown in the books of IREO as payments towards development rights. The land was owned by M3M group and the market value of the land was around Rs 4 crore. M3M group initially sold the development rights of the said land to five shell companies for a payment of Rs 10 crore and it was claimed that these companies are unrelated,” the spokesperson said.

On June 1, the ED carried out raids against the group and its directors as well as against IREO in Delhi and Gurugram.

It later alleged in a press statement that the owners, controllers and promoters of the M3M group — Basant Bansal, Roop Kumar Bansal and Pankaj Bansal — and other key persons deliberately avoided investigations during the raids.