Pearls Group CMD Nirmal Singh Bhangoo's plea seeking to stay proceedings in a case in which his firm has allegedly collected over Rs 49,100 crore from investors in the name of investment schemes violating the law, has been dismissed by a Delhi court.
Additional Sessions Judge Arvind Kumar junked Bhangoo's application saying the offences mentioned in SEBI's complaint are entirely differently from those alleged in CBI's FIR.
"It is clear that the offences as mentioned in the (SEBI) complaint pending before this court is entirely different from the offences as alleged in the FIR (of CBI). By no stretch of imagination offences as alleged in complaint and offences alleged in the FIR, can be said to be the same...
"There is no merit in the application filed by the counsel for accused number 6 (Bhangoo). Accordingly, the application filed by accused Bhangoo is dismissed," the court said.
Bhangoo, through advocates Vijay Aggarwal and Manish Jain, had sought to stay proceedings in the case filed against him by Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) claiming this complaint was based on the same allegations as that of CBI FIR and he cannot be tried twice for the same alleged offence.
The regulator, however, had opposed the plea saying it was deliberate ploy to delay the matter and had sought dismissal of Bhangoo's plea with exemplary cost.
SEBI's counsel S S Mann had argued that the basic facts constituting the offence alleged by regulator were altogether different from those mentioned in CBI's FIR.
The court noted in its order that as per SEBI's complaint, the accused persons were running Collective Investment Scheme and failed to get themselves registered with the regulator and failed to repay the amount collected from investors and failed to comply with and abide by the SEBI Act and Regulations and committed the offences.
CBI's FIR was lodged for the alleged offences of criminal conspiracy and cheating under the IPC against the accused.
"The allegations in CBI FIR are that accused colluded with each other to dishonestly and fraudulently cheat the customers /investors by making false allotment of land to the customers /investors without the companies having ownership of the said land and in the garb of said business model, they have dishonestly collected thousands of crores of rupees on the basis of sham transactions," the court said.
The court had earlier summoned as accused Pearl Agrotech Corporation Ltd (PACL), its promoters and directors, Nirmal Singh Bhangoo, Tarlochan Singh, Sukhdev Singh, Gurmeet Singh, Subrata Bhattacharya, Joginder Tyger, Gurnam Singh, Anand Gurwant Singh and Devinder Kumar Uppal on SEBI's complaint.
Bhangoo, Sukhdev, Gurmeet and Bhattacharya are already in custody in the CBI case.
The court had on December 16, 2015 summoned the accused,
saying prima facie violation under the provisions of SEBI Act and regulations of SEBI (CIS) Regulations, SEBI(Prohibition of Fraudulent and Unfair Trade Practices Relating to Securities Market) is made out in the alleged ponzi case.
According to the regulator's complaint filed in the court in November 2015, PACL had allegedly illegally mobilised Rs 49,100 crore and SEBI had directed it to refund the money to over five crore investors.
The firm challenged SEBI's recovery proceedings to collect funds due to investors before Securities Appellate Tribunal, the complaint said.
It claimed that the firm, which had assets worth only Rs 11,000 crore, had allegedly siphoned of a huge amount of money which was untraceable. The regulator had also imposed a penalty of over Rs 7,269 crore on the firm and its directors, it said.
Bhangoo, CMD of Pearls Golden Forest Ltd (PGF) and ex-Chairman of Pearls Australasia Pty Limited, Sukhdev Singh, MD and Promoter-Director of Pearls Agrotech Corporation Ltd (PACL), Gurmeet Singh, Executive Director(Finance) and Subrata Bhattacharya, Executive Director in the PGF/PACL were arrested by the CBI on January 8 in connection with alleged swindling of Rs 45,000 crore from over five crore investors.
In its FIR, CBI has claimed PACL and PGF were running the schemes illegally and both companies were allegedly engaged in fraudulent activities including forgery in their day-to-day operations.
