Viva Group director Mehul Thakur arrested by ED

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday arrested Mehul Thakur, Director of Viva Group – run by the household of Vasai MLA and chief of Bahujan Vikas Aghadi, Hitendra Thakur – for diverting over Rs 196 crore from Housing Development Infrastructure Limited (HDIL) to the group and transferring two properties value Rs 34 crore of an organization managed by HDIL promoters to the group with none financial consideration.
Mehul is the son of Deepak Thakur, a cousin of Hitendra Thakur. The company additionally arrested Madan Gopal Chaturvedi, a chartered accountant and director of some corporations owned by Mehul. Later, an area court docket remanded Mehul and Chaturvedi to ED custody until January 27.
The ED informed the court docket that Mehul, by means of his members of the family and relations, owned greater than 25 corporations. Most of those corporations are actually defunct however have been used to “divert huge funds from HDIL” in “connivance” with HDIL promoter Rakesh Wadhawan.

The remand utility submitted by ED added that Viva Holding, Viva Estate, Viva Kshitz Enterprises Private Limited and Viva Home Developers have obtained Rs 90.51 crore, Rs 70.11 crore, Rs 32.93 crore and Rs 2.75 crore, respectively, from HDIL.
“Such diversion of funds from HDIL controlled by the Wadhawans to the Viva Group controlled by Mr Mehul Thakur and others remain largely unexplained,” the company informed the court docket. It claimed that these funds are apparently the unlawful fund diverted from the Punjab and Maharashtra Co-operative (PMC) Bank. Besides, the company mentioned that its investigation has discovered that Mack Star Marketing Private Limited, an organization operationally managed by Wadhawan, “illegally and fraudulently transferred two commercial properties of Mack Star in Mumbai, valued at Rs 34.36 crore, to Viva Holding, a company of Viva Group” with none financial consideration.
The ED added that Chaturvedi assisted Mehul in transferring of property of Mack Star to Viva Holdings and ready the steadiness sheet of the corporate, which didn’t replicate the transactions pertaining to those properties.
The company has claimed that each Mehul and Chaturvedi have been summoned for questioning however they didn’t cooperate with the investigation and “failed to provide relevant facts in their statements”.
On Friday, the ED had searched 5 places linked to the Viva Group, together with the residence of Chaturvedi, in reference to its probe into the alleged Rs 6,200 crore fraud perpetrated by HDIL to PMC Bank.
PMC Bank is underneath regulatory restrictions after the RBI discovered monetary irregularities in regard to the loans given to HDIL. The financial institution has an publicity of over Rs 6,200 crore to HDIL. The RBI has outmoded the board of the financial institution and appointed an administrator. Rakesh Wadhawan and his son Sarang Wadhawan are presently in jail within the PMC Bank rip-off case.