Large Scale Money Laundering and FDI violations by IREO and M3M

The Bansals of M3M along with their privately-held companies including RS Infrastructure, High Responsible Realtors, Ornamental Realtors, Dignity Buildcon, and Lalit Goyal of IREO through Commander Realtors, bought a land parcel in Gurugram which was then falling under the commercial belt as per the draft master plan Gurugram in the year 2005-2006.

After acquiring the land in July 2006, Ornamental Realtors, an M3M group company applied for a commercial licence on the said land, spread across 30.51 acres.

However, in February 2007, when the final master plan came out, the said land parcel was partially notified in the residential belt. Accordingly, Ornamental Realtors filed another licence request seeking a commercial license for 17.9 acres of land and a grant of group housing colony licence for the remaining 12.55 acres.

As per the final master plan, the Department of Town and Country Planning (DTCP), Haryana rightly granted them a commercial licence for only 17.9 acres falling under the commercial belt. Further Ornamental Realtors filed a request for considering them as a special case and grant a commercial licence for the remaining land as well, which is falling in the residential zone.

However, in August 2008, the application was rightly rejected by SS Dhillon — the then commissioner of DTCP.

A month later, RS Infrastructure filed a fresh application seeking reconsideration and granting commercial licence for the entire land as a special case and treating it under exceptional circumstances.

The application for reconsideration was forwarded by the district town planner to the DTCP with a note saying, “The pace of grant of licences for development of commercial colonies has been exceptional and unprecedented, thus hardly leaving any room for exemption in present policies for further development of commercial colonies. File may accordingly be submitted to DTCP, Haryana for further orders please”.

DTCP agreed with the note filed by the district town planner and rejected the application again in December 2008.

During February 2009, the office of district town planner started the process of refunding the licence fee back to RS Infrastructure. This fee was paid by RS Infrastructure for seeking commercial licence on the residential part of the land parcel.

However, RS Infrastructure requested to keep their application in the pending status. Later, in July 2009, RS Infrastructure filed an application to the chief minister of Haryana to consider their request for a commercial license for 12.55 acres of land in the residential belt.

By this time, TC Gupta succeeded Dhillon as the new commissioner of DTCP and as per his orders the application was again put up for consideration.

At this point of time, Goyal-owned Commander Realtors and RS Infrastructure jointly applied for the commercial licence and were asked to submit the detailed project report containing the salient features of the project to be considered as a special case.

Finally, in June 2010, the application of Commander Realtors and RS Infrastructure got the final nod. The case was considered under exceptional circumstances involving extreme hardship to the developer and was approved by the Hooda Government without taking proper cabinet approval and in clear violation of norms of the Town and Country planning Department of Haryana Government. 

Income tax raids at various oices of M3M group yielded unaccounted cash worth INR314 crore.

The unaccounted cash seized by the income tax department was linked to RS Infrastructure However no action was taken by the investigative agencies like the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate.