New Delhi:

The Supreme Court has stayed criminal proceedings against IREO Group Managing Director Lalit Goyal and Oberoi Realty Limited Chairman and Managing Director Vikas Oberoi over allegations of cheating, criminal breach of trust and forgery.

A vacation bench of Justices PV Sanjay Kumar and Augustine George Masih issued notice to the Haryana government on a plea filed against an order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

“The question as to whether the filing of the second complaint would amount to an abuse of process and as to whether the complainant approached the court with unclean hands requires further examination. Issue notice to the respondents …In the meanwhile, there shall be stay of further proceedings in relation to FIR,” the bench said.

The top court was hearing a plea filed by IREO and the Oberoi groups challenging the June 6 order of the Punjab and Haryana High Court that upheld registration of FIR.

The FIR was registered on the orders of the chief judicial magistrate at the DLF phase 2 police station following a complaint lodged by Advance India Projects Limited (AIPL) for alleged cheating, criminal breach of trust and forgery.

According to the FIR, IREO and Oberoi — both realty groups — are accused of conspiring to defraud allottees who had invested funds since 2013 thereby not only deceiving investors but also defrauding the AIPL Group.

In its complaint, AIPL claimed that IREO Group embezzled approximately Rs 1,777 crore and transferred it out of the country. About Rs 1,376 crore of this money was collected as advance from the allottees, it alleged.

AIPL alleged that IREO collected Rs 400 crore from about 70 allottees in the Grand Hyatt Residency Project in sector 58 in Chandigarh as part of this embezzlement scheme.

As per the FIR, not only the investors were cheated but also the AIPL group, which had entered into an MoU to complete the project and had made substantial progress to resolve the litigation.

“After various issues of IREO ended with the AIPL agreement, the company entered into an agreement with another builder, Oberoi Group, in bad faith and in violation of the terms and conditions of the agreement. Due to this, AIPL company suffered a loss of thousands of crores (of rupees),” the complainant said in the FIR.

A case was registered against nine people under sections 409 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using forged document) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

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The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has provisionally attached properties worth ₹58.93 crore belonging to the IREO Group of companies and others in connection with a money laundering case involving the alleged proceeds of crime to the tune of ₹1,780 crore.

The agency’s investigation is based on multiple First Information Reports registered at police stations in Gurugram, Panchkula, Ludhiana, and Delhi against the real estate company, associated entities, its directors, key managerial staff, and others.

According to the ED, the accused duped buyers by promising to deliver projects involving flats, plots, commercial spaces, etc. The projects were neither executed nor the money returned to buyers. The company’s directors, in connivance with certain other persons, siphoned off funds and transferred money abroad using various means, extended loans and advances to associated entities/persons, and gave excessive incentives and advances to key managerial persons.

The buyers’ investments were also diverted to other companies, which were identified during the investigation, the agency said.

The ED arrested Lalit Goyal (IREO Group) and Roop Bansal (M3M Group) on November 16, 2021, and June 8, 2023, in this connection. It filed a prosecution complaint dated January 14, 2022, and a supplementary prosecution complaint dated August 4, 2023.