MUMBAI: The
Enforcement Directorate
(ED) has provisionally attached immovable properties worth Rs 53 crore located in Navi Mumbai in the case of
Monarch Universal Group
.
The ED initiated an investigation based on multiple FIRs registered by the police under various sections against Monarch Universal Group, Gopal Amarlal Thakur, Hasmukh Amarlal Thakur, and others for cheating and defrauding genuine flat buyers by collecting money from them for selling flats and not registering the same in their name.
The ED investigation revealed that Gopal Amarlal Thakur diverted and siphoned off a huge amount of investors’ money to its various sister entities and, through a complex web of money trails, parked substantial Proceeds of Crime (PoC) with various builders of Navi Mumbai, namely Baba Homes Builders and Developers, Lakhani Builders Pvt. Ltd, Monarch Solitaire LLP, and others.
Further investigation by the ED revealed that the Monarch Group and its directors sold the same flats to multiple flat buyers. They took loans from NBFCs by mortgaging the already sold flats without the knowledge of the customers. Gopal Thakur of the Monarch Universal group was arrested in July 2021, and he is currently in jail custody.
Thakur’s firms defaulted on a financial institution loan and cheated several flat buyers in their project by not allotting them flats after collecting money and selling them to multiple buyers. Most flats were priced according to the middle-income people’s requirement. The group, which has many projects in Navi Mumbai, had hired a leading actress as a brand ambassador and got celebrities to design interiors of flats in its projects after paying them crores.
