WHILE SIGNBOARDS of the Enforcement Directorate remain on the stretch leading to the 2.5 acre farmhouse in South Delhi’s Rajokri, which served as the probe agency’s Gurugram zonal office for around three years, the property is now sealed. A hand-written notice pasted on a wall at the gate informs visitors that the office has shifted to an address near Sahara Mall on M G Road, Gurugram.
Around two months ago, the agency packed up and moved out of the farmhouse, ending a peculiar legal situation — that of a prime property worth over Rs 100 crore being used as a zonal office and training centre by the agency investigating allegations of financial fraud by the company that owned it.
The Indian Express had reported on October 4, 2024 that even as the ED was occupying this “confiscated” property, its attachment and confiscation had been challenged in court by the Union Bank of India, which had listed the property as “proceeds of crime”. Besides using the spacious bedrooms as office spaces for its senior officers, the ED had also set up a large training unit in the living room and constructed makeshift lock-ups. The indoor swimming pool was being used as a godown for discarded furniture. In all, around 100 staff members worked from the premises for close to three years.
ED officers had then told The Indian Express that the government may shortly be relocating their offices to a Gurugram address but that their training centre would remain at the Rajokri farmhouse. That plan evidently changed with the agency deciding to vacate the entire plush premises.
Seized cars lined up at ED’s Rajokri farmhouse office. (Express photo by Ritu Sarin)
The farmhouse originally belonged to Atul Bansal, a realtor who has since passed away. In 2012, Bansal mortgaged it, along with other assets, with a consortium of banks for Rs 111 crore. This farmhouse, in particular, was mortgaged with the Union Bank of India by one of the group companies, Wisdom Realtors. Following a loan default, the bank took possession of the property in 2017.
The situation changed two years later, with the bank realising that the ED had first attached and later got confiscation orders for the same property since there were money laundering allegations against Wisdom Realtors.
At the time the ED office was located there, the bank’s lawyers had told The Indian Express that the very purpose of the case was defeated with the ED neither auctioning the farmhouse nor handing it over to the bank.
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Now that the ED office has moved out — although the farmhouse has not been surrendered yet — senior officers of the agency said, “The Rajokri property has been confiscated free from all encumbrances under Section 8(7) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and now needs to be sold through an auction. The entire matter is also before the courts.”
On provisions under which they had used the property for around three years, the ED officers cited Section 9 of the PMLA to say that such “confiscated properties” remain “vested with the central government”, and that a Gazette notification of the Ministry of Finance dated September 12, 2023 gave powers to ED officers of the rank of Special Directors to act as “Administers” and “receive, manage and dispose off the property confiscated…”
Union Bank of India’s lawyer Alok Kumar told The Indian Express that their claim for the mortgaged farmhouse has already been filed in courts. “For the bank, which has the first claim to the property, there is nothing to do but to wait for the judgment from the PMLA court in Panchkula. This matter has been facing legal challenge for over six years, and whether the ED physically occupies the property or not, the confiscation survives,” he said.
Incidentally, the ED has been using two other confiscated properties as office space and senior agency officers said there was no immediate plan to vacate them. One of the “repurposed” properties is in Ranchi, near the airport, and the other in Mumbai’s Worli area.
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