Real estate giant Ansal API beneath the scanner in UP

Lucknow: Real property massive Ansal API, entrusted with around 90 initiatives in Uttar Pradesh, now finds itself beneath the scanner for alleged fraud, criminal breach of trust, and diversion of the price range.

The modern-day blow came the remaining week when a Lucknow court docket issued a non-bailable warrant (NBW) towards the company’s pinnacle control, along with chairman Sushil Ansal and his son Pranav Ansal.

“Two administrators of the firm — Arun Mishra and Harish Gulla — have been arrested following the court docket’s NBW inside the depend,” said Avineshwar Chandra Srivastava, Gomti Nagar Circle Officer (Deputy Superintendent of Police) in Lucknow. “The NBW turned into issued towards five persons. The closing three are nonetheless absconding.”

The corporation’s internet site identifies Gulla as the senior VP of enterprise development.

The court order pertains to a case of fraud filed against the firm by a domestic consumer in the Vibhuti Khand suburb of Lucknow. Despite paying Rs 15 lakh to the institution in 2011, the complainant alleged that he had not been given the 1800 rectangular feet plot that the realtor had promised, police said.

Despite repeated attempts, the group could not be reached for comment. This copy may be updated after they provide a comment.

Resignation of Ansal CEO and fraud

The weeks that preceded these arrests witnessed a surge in lawsuits against the realtor and the resignation of a top control head inside the firm.

Citing fitness reasons and family compulsions, Ansal organization’s leader, executive officer, and joint coping with the director, Anil Kumar, resigned from his posts in April this year — it became at a time when the company changed into being investigated by way of the Uttar Pradesh Real Estate Regulatory Authority (UP RERA) after allegations of fraud and diversion of funds got here to the authority’s note.

Moreover, around three months ago, every other fraud complaint opposing the Ansal institution reached the UP police. This time, the complainant was another massive commercial enterprise—a Kanpur-based tanner group, Super Tannery, which alleged that it was duped at nearly Rs five crore.

“More than five years in the past, the Ansal organization had an agreement with the Super Tannery institution over the Taj City project in Agra, and nearly Rs 5 crore has been given to them. The Super Tannery organization approached them when so many years had passed, and they had not received the promised plot. Still, their calls and requests went unanswered,” a senior UP police officer stated. “The institution then approached the police more than a month ago and filed a case of dishonest and criminal breach of accepting as true with in opposition to the pinnacle management of the company.”

The officer further maintained that the UP police administration was in the process of collating all of the police instances into the institution registered throughout the nation to move further.

Fungible use of Rs 606 crore: UP RERA

Alarm bells rang in the UP government corridors last year when UP RERA received around four hundred lawsuits against the institution for non-transport of their residences and its failure to refund their cash. Following this, a Delhi-based company, Currie and Brown, was roped into conducting a forensic audit.

UP RERA Chairman Rajive Kumar advised The Print that the company allegedly diverted around Rs 606 crore from various initiatives out of a total funding of around Rs 2 four hundred crore. Around ninety tasks of the realtor group in UP include “either plotted traits or flats.”

“Some of these initiatives are entire, but some are still incomplete. We had issued notices to the Ansal organization, asking them to tell us their plan of action to finish those tasks,” he stated. “In the preliminary audit, it became shown that some amount of cash that changed was used towards forks, which became used somewhere by the institution.”

Among the ninety-abnormal projects of the Ansal API group is the Sushant Golf City Hi-Tech Township mission spread across 6,000 acres at the Lucknow-Sultanpur Highway, a three-hundred-acre township on the Delhi-Dehradun Bypass in Meerut, any other township assignment called Sushant Taj City in Agra (information about initiatives, township) and high upward thrust organization housing projects in Ghaziabad and Greater Noida.

Responding to RERA’s initial audit, the Ansal organization had told the actual estate regulator that the diverted money changed into either used to pay off loans or to pay off shoppers who wanted a reimbursement. “They additionally claimed that the cash was used for a few other initiatives inside the township,” Kumar said. “There are diverse heads underneath which this money has supposedly been used. Unless the detailed reply comes, it will finish what was used for.”

RERA will be difficult. Officers maintain that they’re waiting for a reply from the group on their notices. “The diverted cash needs to be explained, as well as how they may be going to put cash returned into the tasks and complete them in a time-bound style,” Kumar stated. I am advised that they are in the technique of filing a response that should be with us within the next few days. The authority will then take a name each on the notices and their reply.”