Court Extends DHFL Chief Kapil Wadhawan's ED Custody in PMLA Probe Against Gangster Iqbal Mirchi

Mumbai: A special court on Wednesday extended till January 31, the custody of Dewan Housing Finance Ltd (DHFL) CMD Kapil Wadhawan, arrested by the ED in connection with its money laundering probe against the late gangster Iqbal Mirchi and others.

Wadhawan, 46,was arrested on Monday by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) as he was allegedly not cooperating in the probe and was "untrustworthy" in his dealings and statements made to the agency.

After his arrest, he was produced before a special PMLA court which sent him in ED custody for two days. On Wednesday, at the end of his ED custody, Wadhawan

was produced before special PMLA court judge P Rajvaidya, who extended his remand till January 31.

The case relates to Mirchi's Mumbai properties, which have been called as proceeds of crime by the ED, and three such properties were sold to Sunblink Real Estate Pvt Ltd, a company linked to the Wadhawan brothers, Kapil and Dheeraj.

The agency argued in the court that the proceed of the crime are "interconnected". "It has been 'diverted and layered'. We need to probe how deep it is going," the central agency said.

"Searches are going in relation to the case and we have received some digital evidence which needs to be confronted (with the accused)," the ED said, seeking further custody of the DHFL chairman and managing director (CMD).

Besides, there are certain data which are not available in the book of account (of DHFL), the anti-money laundering agency told the court.

Earlier,the agency had alleged Wadhawan "diverted" funds from DHFL to shell companies and later these dubious entities got amalgamated with Sunblink to "cover" alleged diversion of loans acquired from the housing finance firm.

The ED alleged the conduit of Sunblink was "purposefully created by Kapil Wadhawan as CMD of DHFL and others just to obfuscate the trail of money for purchase of properties" from the Mirchi family.

The ED has filed a criminal case against Mirchi alias Iqbal Memon, his family and others to probe money laundering charges for alleged illegal dealings in purchase and sale of costly real estate assets in Mumbai.

Mirchi, who died in 2013 in London, was alleged to be the right hand man of global terrorist Dawood Ibrahim in drug trafficking and extortion crimes.