ED raids at premises of Nirmal Lifestyle Limited in Mumbai for money laundering

New Delhi, June 8

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) raided the premises of Nirmal Lifestyle Limited in a money laundering case. 

The raids were conducted at several premises linked to the directors of Nirmal Lifestyle as well as their offices.

The ED case is based on the cases of housing fraud registered by the Mumbai police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW) against the developer. 

According to the EOW’s probe, the developer had assured home buyers it will hand over the flats to them by December 2015, but it only completed 90 per cent of the work of Zircon, 50–70 per cent of Amethyst, and 50–60 per cent of Turquoise, and, thereafter, allegedly left them incomplete.

As per the case details, in April, EOW had arrested two directors of the real estate company Dharmesh Jain and Rajiv Jain, for allegedly duping several flat buyers to the tune of Rs 11 crore. They were arrested in connection with a second case filed by EOW. Later, the accused got bail in the EOW cases.

The developer allegedly took money from buyers in 2010-11 in the name of selling flats in a Mulund (West) project, but has not handed over the flats to date. The housing-2 unit of EOW had in December 2021 registered an FIR under sections 406, 409, 420, and 120B of the Indian Penal Code and 3, 4, 5, 8, and 13 of the Maharashtra Ownership of Flats Act (MOFA) against directors of Nirmal Lifestyle—Dharmesh Jain, Rajeev Jain, Puja Jain, and others.

This FIR stated the developer duped 54 flat buyers who had paid it for flats in the 39-story high-rise Zircon project located on LBS Marg, Mulund (West). Flat buyers claimed the developer allegedly failed to deliver the flat on the promised deadline as construction work was stopped for some reason. On being asked, the developer told the flat buyers the project was delayed because they did not get certain permissions from the BMC for the revised plan.

Like Zircon, other flat buyers from the same project’s other wings, Amethyst and Turquoise, had similarly paid the developer but did not receive their flats. Their complaints were also merged with that of the Zircon Flat Owners Welfare Association, taking the amount of the alleged fraud to Rs 49.54 crore.

The ED is further investigating the case.