Yes Bank case: ED submits chargesheet against Romi Bhagat and 16 others

ED files chargesheet against Hiren Bhagat and 16 others, including Ajay Peter Kerkar, in Yes Bank case money-trail investigation. Bhagat allegedly helped Kerkar create false narrative.

MUMBAI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has filed its supplementary chargesheet in a city special court against suspected liaison agent Hiren Bhagat alias Romi and 16 others, including Ajay Peter Kerkar, former promoter of travel firm Cox & Kings, as part of its money-trail investigation related to the Yes Bank case. ED sources said the charge sheet included several entities, apart from a few individuals.

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The agency’s probe has allegedly revealed that Bhagat had assisted Kerkar in creating a false narrative to project the latter as the victim and a complainant in the Yes Bank fraud case. According to ED, Bhagat had allegedly helped Kerkar by lodging two FIRs by the Nagpada police based on wrong facts, as discovered after their registration. ED’s probe revealed that thereafter as part of an alleged quid pro quo arrangement between Bhagat and Kerkar, a firm controlled by the former, Illuminati Services, received funds worth ₹71 lakh in October 2020 from a United States–based entity controlled by Kerkar. The estimated proceeds of crime in the case allegedly are over ₹1.5 crore as per the first supplementary chargesheet, ED sources said.

The agency had taken custody of Bhagat on March 15 from the court in connection with its probe against him, based on a Bandra police’s alleged extortion case of ₹9.25 crore in which a Kerkar family member is the complainant. ED had recorded Bhagat’s statement under provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act on March 16 in which he alleged that he got acquainted with Kerkar in 2019 and that the latter met him later to seek his help in lodging two FIRs with Kerkar as the complainant. Bhagat claimed he later helped Kerkar in drafting the concept of the application to lodge the FIR with the latter’s team.

Bhagat allegedly admitted to having arranged to rent a premise located within the jurisdiction of the Nagpada police to allegedly “manage the jurisdiction of the FIR”, according to ED. The rented premise at a chawl building — Rassiwala Chawl, Nimkar Marg — was allegedly shown as the office address of Cox & Kings Company which helped in justifying the lodging of two FIRs in September 2020, under Nagpada police, according to ED. Following Bhagat’s allegations against Kerkar in his statement, the ED had recorded on March 17 the statement of the current occupant of the concerned chawl room, which was allegedly cited as the address of Cox & Kings Company, who corroborated Bhagat’s account. The room’s occupant said that despite the rental agreement, for which his family was paid ₹3 lakh, he continued to stay there during the rental contract’s period.

According to ED, in 2020, there was an ongoing money-trail investigation related to the Yes Bank case, wherein a substantial amount of proceeds of crime had allegedly been traced to Cox & Kings. CKG came under the ED scanner in the Yes Bank case as the former allegedly owed ₹3,642 crore to the private bank, as per a formal complaint against it filed in March 2020 by the bank. Kerkar was arrested by the ED in November 2020 and has been in judicial custody for over three years subsequently. ED had then claimed that it had arrested Kerkar in an agency case based upon the Nagpada police case, which the latter had registered on the directions of a metropolitan court, which had heard a complaint from Kerkar.

ED’s case was registered on November 23, 2020. ED had then told a city special court while seeking his remand that the “accused himself was a mastermind behind siphoning the proceeds of crime and he has lodged complaints against co-accused persons, with an ulterior motive to escape.” In his complaints to Nagpada police, Kerkar had accused a few of his then employees of cheating and breach of trust. Kerkar’s lawyer had then rejected ED’s allegations against his client, saying he “had not siphoned a single pie”.