A report in The Wire on Friday, 22 November, said the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) took a large donation from a company that is now being probed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for facilitating “terror funding” and carrying out transactions with 1993 blast accused Iqbal Mirchi. Mirchi is also a close aide of mafia don Dawood Ibrahim.
“In 2014-15, RKW, which is associated with the beleaguered Dewan Housing Finance Limited (DHFL), gave Rs 10 crore to the party” the report says, adding that this is the “highest donation given to the party from an individual company.”
There is another interesting aspect to this case. The Wadhawan family, who are the promoters of RKW and DHFL also happens to be the same family whose members are being probed by the Mumbai Police’s Economic Offences Wing in connection with the Rs 4,355-crore Punjab and Maharashtra Cooperative (PMC) Bank Scam.
The promoters of DHFL – Dheeraj Wadhawan and Kapil Wadhawan – are the sons of late Rajesh Wadhawan, whose brother Rakesh Wadhawan was arrested by Mumbai police last month along with his son Sarang.
Rajesh Wadhawan and Rakesh Wadhawan are both sons of Dewan Kuldip Singh Wadhawan.
It is Dewan Kuldip Singh, a refugee from West Pakistan who settled in Mumbai after the Partition, who laid the foundations of a vast construction and financial empire.
The family split through a mutual agreement in 2010. Nearly a decade later, the companies run by both the sides of the Wadhawan family are in trouble with the investigation agencies.
Case Against DHFL
The ED alleges that DHFL-promoted RKW Developers facilitated the sale of Iqbal Mirchi’s properties in Mumbai.
“Ranjeet Bindra, a former director in RKW, has been arrested by the ED for allegedly facilitating deals on behalf of the underworld. News reports have quoted ED sources describing Bindra as an “agent” who “brokered” the deal between Mirchi and the firms,” says the report in The Wire.
Case Against HDIL
The Mumbai Police’s Economic Offences’ Wing filed a case against Rakesh and Sarang Wadhawan and top officials of the PMC Bank, alleging that the bank management, in cahoots with the Wadhawans, concealed from the banking regulators’ scrutiny huge loan defaults by the HDIL group firms.
According to it, the bank officials replaced 44 loan accounts of the HDIL with 21,049 fictitious accounts to camouflage huge loan defaults by the real estate group, it said.
The ED is also probing the father-son duo for money laundering, based on the case filed by the economic offences wing.
The BJP Connections
Another aspect common to both sides of the Wadhawan family is their alleged link to the BJP.
The Wire’s story says that besides the Rs 10 crore donation by RKW, “another company accused by the ED of buying Mirchi’s properties, Sunblink Real Estate, is linked, via a common directorship, to another company – Skill Realtors – that also made a Rs 2 crore donation to the BJP.”
The story further says that “Placid Jacob Naronha, a director in RKW Developers, is also a director of Darshan Developers Private Limited, which donated Rs 7.5 crore to the BJP in 2016-17, EC filings reveal.”
In the HDIL case, the link with the BJP is through Rajneet Singh, one of the directors of PMC Bank who is accused of colluding with the Wadhawans. Rajneet Singh happens to be the son of former BJP MLA from Mulund Master Tara Singh.
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