Money-laundering case: Rs 50 crore assets of Pawan Munjal attached

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has “provisionally attached” assets worth about Rs 50 crore belonging to Hero MotoCorp Executive Chairman Pawan Munjal in connection with a money-laundering investigation against him. These include three immovable properties (in the form of land) in Delhi, the central agency said in a statement on Friday.

The ED alleged that Munjal misused the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) liberalised remittance scheme (LRS) by illegally moving foreign currency and valuable items worth Rs 54 crore abroad and later using them for his personal expenses.

“The foreign currency was drawn from authorised dealers by an event management company in the name of various employees and thereafter handed over to Munjal’s relationship manager. The relationship manager carried such foreign currency in cash or card secretly for the personal expenditure of Munjal during his personal or business trips,” said the agency. “The modus was adopted to ‘override’ the limits of the LRS,” it added.

The LRS allows resident individuals, including minors, to remit up to $250,000 in current or capital account transactions in a financial year.

The ED started the investigation following a prosecution complaint against Munjal and others by the Directorate of Revenue intelligence (DRI) under Section 135 of the Customs Act, 1962, for allegedly taking foreign currency or foreign exchange out of India illegally.

In August, the ED had conducted searches at 12 premises of Munjal, his companies, and related entities and recovered foreign currency, cash, gold, and diamond jewelry worth about Rs 25 crore.

Last year, the income-tax department also conducted searches on the premises of Munjal and Hero MotoCorp as part of a tax evasion probe.

Hero MotoCorp, India’s second-largest two-wheeler manufacturer, reported a 47.59 per cent year-on-year jump in consolidated net profit at Rs 1,007 crore in the quarter ended September 30.

Shares of Hero MotoCorp plunged 2.08 per cent on Friday.