3 months ago
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ARTICLE AD BOX
NEW DELHI: Continuing its cognition against alleged fraudulent firm resolutions of bankrupt companies and wealth laundering activities during insolvency proceedings astatine National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), ED connected Thursday arrested Arvind Kumar, a erstwhile solution nonrecreational (RP) of Richa Industries Ltd.Kumar, who was the company's RP betwixt 2018 and 2025, is the archetypal ever RP to beryllium arrested by an enforcement bureau connected charges of collusion with promoters of a bankrupt company, siphoning disconnected assets of a institution nether insolvency, and laundering proceeds of crime. A tribunal has remanded him successful 8 days of ED custody.In Jan, ED had arrested the company's erstwhile promoter Sandeep Gupta. The bureau had past claimed Gupta had not lone cheated banks of hundreds of crores, but besides allegedly laundered invaluable assets of the company, erstwhile it went to insolvency, by diverting them to ammunition entities floated by him and his associates.Kumar's apprehension came 2 days aft NCLT's Delhi seat withdrew its insolvency solution grant of Alchemist Ltd aft ED produced grounds of fraud against the firm solution wherever a sister interest of the institution nether insolvency was brought successful arsenic portion of the committee of creditors (CoC) with 97% voting stock to fraudulently get assets.In the Richa Industries case, the firm insolvency solution process, initiated successful 2018, reached a dormant extremity successful lack of an approved solution plan, starring NCLT to bid liquidation connected June 11 past year.
A liquidator was appointed and the merchantability of Richa Industries yielded Rs 40 crore to Indian Overseas Bank and Union Bank against their admitted claims of Rs 696 crore, astir a 94% haircut, ED said."Bank records (of Kumar) further showed unexplained currency deposits exceeding Rs 80 lakh successful his idiosyncratic accounts during the play of his appointment, on with credits of implicit Rs 1 crore received from his related parties who had earlier been beneficiaries of payments from the company," according to ED's probe report.The bureau said that "the arrested RP was a beneficiary of the proceeds of transgression generated from the archetypal slope fraud, projecting illicit funds arsenic morganatic receipts nether the guise of CIRP-related operations".According to ED, the RP adopted a modus operandi, allegedly followed successful galore different NCLT solution cases wherever constitution of CoC were "manipulated by admitting sham and inflated claims of unsecured fiscal creditors, galore of them dummy/proxies controlled by the ex-promoters who masterminded the slope fraud, thereby handing decisive voting powerfulness to the suspended promoters and sidelining genuine nationalist assemblage slope creditors".
