FIR filed against IREO Group, Oberoi Realty MDs for alleged fraud in Gurugram

Gurugram: An FIR was registered against nine people, including IREO Group Managing Director Lalit Goyal and Oberoi Realty Limited Chairman and Managing Director Vikas Oberoi, under various sections of cheating, criminal breach of trust and forgery, police said on Sunday.

The FIR was filed on the orders of the Chief Judicial Magistrate at the DLF phase 2 police station on Friday following a complaint lodged by Advance India Projects Limited (AIPL), citing allegations of cheating, criminal breach of trust and forgery against the accused, the police said.

According to the FIR, IREO and Oberoi -- both realty groups -- are accused of conspiring to defraud allottees who had invested funds since 2013, thus 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 sent it out of the country, adding that about Rs 1,376 crore was recovered as advances from the allottees.

AIPL alleged that IREO collected Rs 400 crore from about 70 allottees in the Grand Hyatt Residency Project in sector 58 here as part of this embezzlement scheme.

It is also added that in this regard, several cases were registered against IREO Group and it was investigated by the Enforcement Directorate and later the group's chief director and accused Lalit Goyal was also arrested. Due to this, the project was stopped midway and cases were filed in different courts on behalf of the allottees.

According to the police, the FIR is pertaining to the same project for which Oberoi Realty Limited had recently informed the stock exchanges of its entry into the Delhi-NCR luxury segment by entering into a joint venture with IREO.

The facts of the present FIR are shocking and highlights how IREO and Oberoi had deliberately conspired to deprive the investors who had invested money since 2013, they said.

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,' the complainant said in the FIR.

Following a petition filed regarding this fraud, a case has been 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), 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the police said.

A senior police officer said that they are investigating into the matter and the accused will be arrested after verifying the facts.