The agency’s legal team made the claim before an appellate tribunal for forfeited property (ATFP) in Delhi.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has, for the first time, claimed that fugitive diamantaire Mehul Choksi’s son, Rohan Choksi, was also “actively” involved in the offence of money laundering along with his father, who is accused of cheating Indian banks of thousands of crores of rupees and now facing extradition proceedings in Belgium.
The agency’s legal team made the claim before an appellate tribunal for forfeited property (ATFP) in Delhi while opposing a plea by Rohan Choksi regarding attachment of a Mumbai property in 2018. Rohan Choksi has said the property was bought by his family trust in 1994.
ED, however, argued before the tribunal that the property was transferred by Mehul Choksi in Rohan’s name in 2013 as a “calculated move” in anticipation of the attachment of properties in case his fraud was detected.
To be sure, Rohan Choksi has never been named in any first information reports (FIRs) or charge sheets filed by ED or the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). People familiar with the Choksi family , who didn’t want to be named, said Rohan Choksi had separated his businesses from his father and is not in touch with him. Rohan Choksi’s location is not known. People close to the family refused to disclose his whereabouts as he is not a wanted person or named accused in any case.
Mehul Choksi fled abroad in 2017 after cheating Indian banks and has since then moved from the US, to Belgium, to Antigua and Barbuda and finally to Belgium. He is currently lodged in a prison in Antwerp after being arrested on April 11 last year based on an extradition request by the CBI.
As part of its investigation into the Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud, ED has attached and seized a large number of properties worth ₹2,565 crore linked to Mehul Choksi’s companies, linked entities, his family members, etc. These include a flat in Dadar East, Mumbai, in the name of a firm, Rohan Mercantile Pvt Ltd and a flat in Walkeshwar Road, Mumbai, which is in the name of Rohan Choksi.
An adjudicating authority (AA) under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) , through an order passed in August 2018, confirmed the attachment of Dadar East flat by ED but didn’t confirm the action in the case of Walkeshwar flat.
Now, in an order passed on January 8, ATFP’s members , Balesh Kumar and Rajesh Malhotra, have referred the matter back to AA for correcting its mistake by not including Walkeshwar property in its August 2018 order.
Rohan Choksi, questioning the continuation of attachment even after AA’s order, argued before ATFP that the Walkeshwar Road property was purchased by his family trust in June 1994, transferred in his name (by his father) on November 1, 2013, while the predicate offence was committed between 2015 and 2017, and “hence the said property was rightly not confirmed by the AA”. He also argued that he has not been named in any FIR, or charge sheet and that “he was beneficiary of a family trust created in 1993, when PMLA was not in existence”.
Countering Rohan Choksi, ED’s legal team informed ATFP that Mehul Choksi “deliberately caused the transfer of the said property in the name of his son Rohan Parth Mehul Choksi on November 1, 2013. This was a calculated move of Mehul Choksi in anticipation of the attachment of the properties in case of detection of fraud in due course”.
ED argued that “all the facts and evidence on record clearly points towards the direction that Rohan Choksi was also actively involved along with his father Mehul Choksi for commission of offence of money laundering, after the commission of predicate offence”. It further stated that even if a property is bought in 1994, it can be attached as value thereof in the absence of direct proceeds of crime.