The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on October 19, Saturday, carried out raids at around fourteen places, including Dewan Housing Finance Corp Ltd (DHFL) offices and its promoters’ residences, in a money laundering case against Iqbal Mirchi, who was a close accomplice of underworld fugitive Dawood Ibrahim.
ED had on October 15 made a submission in a Mumbai court that property developer Sunblink Real Estate Private Limited was given a loan of Rs 2,186 crore by DHFL on three properties, which are under the scanner in the Iqbal Mirchi case. The agency is now scrutinising the DHFL documents related to the loan.
The ED, during the probe, has found that the company had started giving loans to Sunblink Real Estate Private Limited in the year 2010. The agency is now probing whether this loan was allegedly routed overseas by Sunblink into the accounts of Iqbal Mirchi over a period of nine years.
The DHFL has, however, disputed ED’s claims maintaining that it had no links to the alleged dubious transactions.
The financial probe agency had tightened the screws on the money laundering case linked to the multi-crore real estate deals of Mirchi after it arrested Haroun Yusuf and one Ranjit Singh Bindra who had brokered a deal with Mirchi’s trust and Sunblink Realtors Pvt Ltd. Mirchi’s Mumbai assets alone are speculated to be worth more than Rs 500 crores. Based on the Mumbai Police’s FIR on Yusuf, Mirchi and others, the ED has filed a PMLA case on Yusuf and Bindra.
Delving further, the ED found the case to be linked with several politicians, through numerous firms and private companies. After it zeroed in the properties of Iqbal Memon alias ‘Mirchi’, the ED had also discovered links with a firm that is linked to former UPA-era civil aviation minister Praful Patel and his wife Varsha Patel.
OpIndia had accessed documents which validate NCP leader and former Union Minister Praful Patel’s financial dealings with Dawood Ibrahim and his associates. The documents accessed by us reveal signatures of Praful Patel on documents that linked him to Igbal Memon, a key aide of Dawood Ibrahim.
The ED has named Mirchi as an international drug dealer, smuggler, extortionist and criminal involved in anti-national interest. In 2004, Mirchi was listed as one of the foreign drug kingpins by the US state department. He had an Interpol red corner notice against him. Mirchi had died in the UK on 14 August 2013.
