ED questions car designer Dilip Chhabria

Mumbai: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Monday questioned automobile designer and DC Motors owner Dilip Chhabria in connection with the money laundering case registered against him earlier this year

Mumbai: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Monday questioned automobile designer and DC Motors owner Dilip Chhabria in connection with the money laundering case registered against him earlier this year.

Dilip Chhabria Dilip Chhabria Design Pvt. Ltd. (DC) at his Corporate Office in mumbai. For Shally’s story shoot happened on 2/03/12, pic by hemant mishra/mint.

In July, the ED booked Chhabria under the stringent Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002 based on a cheating case registered against him by the Mumbai Police in 2020.

ED had also conducted searches at several of his properties in Mumbai and Pune, seizing documents and electronic evidence connected to the case.

ED officials said that Chhabria reached their office in Ballard Estate at around 12.30pm on Monday and was questioned in connection with the trail of money and the disbursal of the proceeds of his crime, sources said.

The Criminal Intelligence Unit (CIU) of the Mumbai police crime branch in December 2020, arrested Chhabria after he was allegedly found to be availing loans from non-banking financial institutions in the name of customers of his own company. Chhabria had allegedly sought vehicle loans in the name of his past customers, by furnishing documents that claimed that the customers wished to buy sports cars from DC Motors.

Chhabria was booked in two separate cases by the CIU and one more by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) in this regard. Subsequent investigations had indicated that Chhabria had borrowed crores of rupees using bogus documents, with the engine and chassis number of a single car in multiple instances. It was also found that multiple cars with the same engine and chassis numbers were registered in various states like Maharashtra, Chennai and Haryana.

Chhabria left the Mumbai ED office at around 7.30pm after seven hours of questioning.