Praful Patel gets back flats worth ₹180 crore after court quashes ED action: Report

A Mumbai court earlier this week quashed an Enforcement Directorate(ED) order seeking the attachment of NCP leader Praful Patel’s properties worth over ₹180 crore, in connection with a money laundering case related to alleged illegal assets of late Iqbal Mirchi, a close aide of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.

The order was passed by an Appellate Tribunal that deals with the Smugglers and Foreign Exchange Manipulators Act (SAFEMA) on June 3, reported The Times of India.

According to the report, the tribunal called the probe agency’s action against Patel “illegal”, adding that the properties – at least seven flats in Mumbai’s Ceejay House owned by Patel, his wife Varsha and their company Millennium Developers – were not involved in money laundering or linked to Iqbal Mirchi.

It added that the properties belonging to Mirchi’s wife Hazra Memon and her two sons in Ceejay House were reportedly attached separately and a double attachment of another same property belonging to the Patels was “not required”.

What were the allegations made by ED?

According to the ED, Patel’s Millennium Developers Pvt Ltd constructed a building called Ceejay House in Mumbai in 2006-07 and its third and fourth floors, measuring around 14,000 square feet, were transferred to Mirchi’s wife Hazra Iqbal Memon. It added that the properties were allegedly acquired from Iqbal Mirchi’s widow through “illegal transactions” such as from the proceeds of crime of money laundering, drug trafficking, and alleged extortion crimes.

Mirchi, an accused in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case, died in 2013.

However, Patel maintained that the deal was essentially a redevelopment one, involving property partly owned by his family, and partly by others (including Hazra Memon).

CBI’s corruption case against Patel closed

Meanwhile, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) closed a corruption case involving Patel in March this year – shortly after he joined the rival BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) following a vertical split in the NCP. According to the probe agency, there was “evidence of any wrongdoing” by Patel, an Ajit Pawar loyalist, into the alleged irregularities in the leasing of aircraft by National Aviation Corporation of India Ltd. (NACIL) – formed after the merger of Air India and Indian Airlines.