The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has registered a money laundering case after conducting several searches at premises linked to the DC Motors owner Dilip Chhabria. The searches were conducted at six premises located in Mumbai and Pune on Thursday.
ED has registered the money laundering case on the basis of cases filed in 2020 by the Crime Intelligence Unit (CIU) and Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Mumbai Police 2020 against Chhabria, his sister and other relatives.
Dilip Chhabria was arrested back on December 28, 2020 by the CIU, after his firm DC Designs Private Ltd allegedly availed loans from a non-banking financial company (NBFC) by posing as customers who wanted to buy DC sports cars.
Dilip Chhabria is currently facing three cases – two of them are filed by CIU and one of them is filed by EOW of Mumbai Police.
Chhabria has also been accused by the Mumbai Police of registering the same vehicle twice and at times even thrice with different regional transport offices (RTO) of different states. He then used the registration numbers to obtain more loans in the same car.
The Mumbai Police received a tip that a DC Avanti with a fake registration number is parked outside the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai. The cops laid a trap to catch the vehicle and were able to do that successfully. On the night of the 18th, the police caught the car outside the Taj Mahal hotel. The cops found out that the vehicle is registered in Tamil Nadu while the chassis and the VIN are registered in Haryana RTO under a different registration number.
The car owner, who is from Tamil Nadu failed to explain the same to the police. Curiously, the police also found out that the address in Haryana belongs to Dilip Chhabria’s company. The cops then seized the vehicle and asked the owner of the vehicle to become a complainant in the case. The cops also suspect that Chhabria’s company released cars with the same VIN and chassis numbers to fool the financial organisations.
While the fraud is suspected of nearly Rs 100 crores but the amount is expected to rise with the ongoing investigations. The crime branch is also investigating the quantum loss to the government exchequer caused by Dilip Chhabria by the virtue of nonpayment of applicable taxes such as customs duties, GST and more.
