ED raids premises of Nirmal Lifestyle, its directors in Mumbai over housing fraud

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) Thursday raided the premises of Mumbai-based prominent real estate development firm Nirmal Lifestyle Limited in a money laundering case. Sources in ED said it raided several premises linked to the directors of Nirmal Lifestyle as well as their offices.

The ED case is based on the cases of housing fraud registered by the Mumbai police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW) against the developer. In April, EOW had arrested two directors of the real estate company Dharmesh Jain, 55, and Rajiv Jain, 50, for allegedly duping several flat buyers to the tune of Rs 11 crore.They were arrested in connection with a second case filed by EOW. Later, the accused got bail in the EOW cases. In all, EOW is probing three cases against the developer.

According to the EOW’s probe, the developer had assured home buyers it will hand over the flats to them by December 2015, but it only completed 90 per cent of the work of Zircon, 50–70 per cent of Amethyst, and 50–60 per cent of Turquoise, and, thereafter, allegedly left them incomplete.

“Despite accepting money from homebuyers, the developer did not use it for building the projects; instead, the developer misused the money by diverting it to their other companies and establishments,” EOW has said.The complainant home buyers had also moved to MahaRERA against the developer in April 2019. The RERA authority had extended the deadline for the completion of the project and also directed it to pay a monthly rent to the flat buyers, which the developer eventually paid. Despite this, the developer failed to complete the entire project.