A special PMLA court has sent two promoters of a Chandigarh-based pharma company, arrested for a ₹1,626-crore bank fraud, to judicial custody.
The accused are Pranav Gupta, managing director, and Vineet Gupta, director of Parabolic Drugs Ltd.
The duo, along with their chartered accountant SK Bansal, were taken into custody by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on October 28 for money laundering under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) following a long session of questioning.
After their ED custody ended, they were produced before the PMLA court that sent them to judicial custody. Bansal is already lodged in Model Jail, Sector 51.
The money laundering case stems from a CBI FIR in which the promoters and the pharma company were booked for allegedly defrauding a consortium of banks, led by the Central Bank of India, of ₹1,626.74 crore between 2009 and 2014.
The Guptas are also the co-founders of the Sonepat-based Ashoka University, but had stepped down from their posts in 2022 after the CBI registered a case against them and the company in 2021.
Launching raids at the Ashoka University’s corporate and registered offices in Delhi and campus in Haryana’s Sonepat on October 27, ED had conducted search operations at a total of 20 premises, also covering Chandigarh and Panchkula. The searches resulted in recovery of movable and immovable assets to the tune of ₹114 crore, digital devices and various incriminating documents.
{{/usCountry}}Launching raids at the Ashoka University’s corporate and registered offices in Delhi and campus in Haryana’s Sonepat on October 27, ED had conducted search operations at a total of 20 premises, also covering Chandigarh and Panchkula. The searches resulted in recovery of movable and immovable assets to the tune of ₹114 crore, digital devices and various incriminating documents.
{{/usCountry}}“Vineet Gupta and Pranav Gupta were actively and directly involved in generation, layering and siphoning of proceeds of crime by way of availing bank finances by illegally inflating the value of primary security against which drawings were allowed by the bank,” investigation had found.
Under their command and control, the loan funds were diverted and fraudulently rotated through their group companies and various shell companies. ED investigation also revealed that the Guptas and their company availed loans/financial facilities through forged documents.
Chartered accountant SK Bansal was their statutory auditor during the period of offence. He assisted the Guptas in illegally changing the loan funds from liabilities to assets by way of circuitous transactions.
He is also accused of intentionally concealing crucial financial facts from lending banks and also issuing false certificates for obtaining loans.
ED is looking at a total of 20 linked companies as part of the bank-loan fraud case, officials said.