Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut on Wednesday failed to appear before the Enforcement Directorate in a money laundering case over the alleged irregularities in redevelopment of a ‘chawl’ in Mumbai and sought time till August 7. However, the ED rejected his request and issued him another summons to appear before it on July 27.
On July 1, he was questioned for 10 hours by the central agency. After getting out of the office, he had tweeted, “It is our duty to go in front of the central agencies if they have any doubt in their minds so that people do not have any doubt in their minds about us. We were questioned for 10 hours and we gave full co-operation.”
Before going into the ED office, the member of parliament had tweeted, “I will be appearing before the ED today at 12 noon. I respect the Summons issued to me and it’s my duty to co-operate with the Investigation agencies. I appeal Shiv Sena workers not to gather at the ED office. Don’t worry!”
The case dates back to March 2018 when a First Information Report was registered under the provision of prevention of money laundering act against M/s Guru Ashish Construction, Housing Development and Infrastructure Limited’s (HDIL) promoters Rakesh and Sarang Wadhwan on basis of complaint filed by an executive engineer of Maharashtra Housing and Area Development (MHADA).
According to the ED, M/s Guru Ashish Construction was entrusted with the development of Patra chawl project for rehabilitation of 672 tenants in 47 acres of land. During the relevant time the Wadhawan brothers and Pravin Raut were the directors of M/s Guru Ashish Construction.
As per the agreement, the developer was to provide flats to the tenants and develop flats for MHADA and thereafter the remaining area to be sold by the developer. ED contends the directors of M/s Guru Ashish Constructions misled MHADA and managed to sell the floor space index to nine developers and collected approximately Rs 901.79 crore without constructing the rehab portion for 672 displaced tenants and MHADA portion.
