india

Updated: Jan 14, 2020 09:11 IST

The Supreme Court asked the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Monday to attach Indian properties of JPMorgan (JPM), which engaged in a transaction with the now-defunct Amrapali Group to allegedly siphon off home buyers’ money in violation of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) and FDI norms.

The ED said it had prima facie found violations of FEMA norms by JPM and that a complaint in this regard was lodged.

The Supreme Court also allowed ED to take into custody the defunct group’s chairman and managing director, Anil Kumar Sharma, and two other directors, Shiv Priya and Ajay Kumar, who are behind bars on the top court’s order, for interrogation as regards alleged money-laundering offences.

It said the central agency could take them into custody immediately and once their interrogation was over, they could be sent back to a prison here.

A bench of justices Arun Mishra and UU Lalit was told by ED joint director Rajeshwar Singh, who is supervising the probe against JPM, that the firm remitted the money back to US.

According to the share subscription agreement, JPM had invested ₹85 crore on October 20, 2010 to have a preferential claim on profits in the ratio of 75% to JPM and 25% to the promoters of Amrapali Homes Project Pvt. Ltd and Ultra Home. Later, the same number of shares was bought back from JPM for ₹140 crore by two firms owned by a peon and an office boy of Amrapali’s statutory auditor Anil Mittal.

“They (JPM) have a lot of properties in India. We want you to attach their office or corporate properties of a like amount. Then they will come running to us and we will see to it,” the bench

said.