New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday arrested two promoters of a Chandigarh-based pharma company, who are also the co-founders of the Sonepat-based Ashoka University, and a chartered accountant in a money-laundering probe linked to an alleged bank fraud.
Official sources said the central agency also continued with its searches against the group for the second day, including at the Ashoka University’s corporate and registered offices in Delhi and campus in Sonepat.
Parabolic Drugs promoters Vineet Gupta (54) and Pranav Gupta (56), who are also the co-founders of the Ashoka University, and CA Surjeet Kumar Bansal (74) were taken into custody under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), following a long session of questioning at the agency’s office in Chandigarh.
A special PMLA court in Chandigarh sent them to the ED’s custody for five days.
A total of 17 premises in Delhi, Mumbai, Chandigarh and Panchkula were covered by the ED after the raids were launched on Friday.
The Guptas had stepped down from their posts at the Ashoka University in 2022 after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registered a case against them and the company in 2021. The ED filed a money-laundering case against them in January last year.
The agency told the court that the two arrested directors of the company were “actively involved in defrauding banks by availing loans or financial facilities based upon forged and fabricated documents”.
It alleged that the two “intentionally changed the colour of the loan funds from liabilities to assets and layered, diverted and siphoned off the said funds by way of circuitous transactions using platforms of their group companies that were under their control”.
The agency said the two availed services of “shell companies” and “illegally inflated the value of primary security against which drawings were allowed by banks”.
“Under their command and control, Parabolic Drugs Limited raised fake and unrelated goods invoices and illegally received entries from shell companies,” the agency alleged.
It said Bansal, through his chartered accountancy firm S K Bansal and Company, issued “false certificates to Parabolic Drugs Limited which were used for availing loans from a consortium of banks”.
According to the CBI FIR, their illegal activities and abuse of loan funds caused a wrongful loss of Rs 1,626.74 crore to the Central Bank of India and other banks in the consortium, the ED told the court while seeking the remand of the three.
The defence counsel opposed the ED action in the court, saying the arrests of the Guptas were “illegal and wrong” as the insolvency proceedings of their company have been resolved and hence, there was no loss to the banks. The lawyer also said there is a petition pending before a high court where the two have sought relief from any possible coercive action in the bank-loan fraud case.
The Ashoka University did not respond to PTI’s queries in this context on Saturday.
On Friday, the university had said the “Enforcement Directorate has sought information in the matter of investigations into the case of Parabolic Drugs where Ashoka University founders Vineet Gupta and Pranav Gupta are directors”.
It had said Parabolic Drugs was “in no way linked to the Ashoka University”.
“Ashoka University has no past or current relationship with Parabolic Drugs, the company being investigated, and any attempt to create a link is without any basis and misleading,” the university had said in a statement.
The money-laundering case stems from the CBI FIR, in which the promoters and the pharma company were booked for allegedly defrauding the consortium of banks led by the Central Bank of India of Rs 1,626.74 crore.
According to the sources, the ED suspects that the Guptas “layered and diverted” the bank loan funds to the tune of Rs 7 crore to the university.
It has found documents that allegedly show that an amount of the loan funds was transferred in September 2013 to an infrastructure company and was further transferred to Vineet Gupta’s bank accounts and of this, he reportedly sent Rs 1 crore to the university.
Another amount of Rs 50 lakh is under the ED’s scanner as the agency suspects that it was transferred to a sister company of Parabolic Drugs — Jamboree Education Private Limited — and subsequently, transferred to the university by Vineet Gupta.
The agency is looking at a total of 20 linked companies as part of the bank-loan fraud case, the sources said.
“Vineet and Pranav Gupta are two among the more than 200 founders and donors of the Ashoka University who have contributed to Ashoka’s creation and growth in their personal philanthropic capacity and whose individual businesses have absolutely no bearing on the university,” the university said.
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