Court Stays Criminal Proceedings Against MDs Of IREO Group, Oberoi Realty

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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