Haryana: ED arrests IREO's key man in judge bribery scandal
Chandigarh, July 4
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) today arrested the IREO group’s key person, Lalit Goyal, in the judge bribery scandal.
Goyal will be produced before the ED’s Panchkula court on Wednesday.
Both the ED and the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), Haryana, are investigating the judge bribery scandal. In fact, based on the ACB’s FIR, dated April 17, alleging favours to the IREO group’s Lalit Goyal and promoters of the M3M by the CBI and ED judge Sudhir Parmar, the ED had registered Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) No. 17 on June 13 against the judge, his nephew Ajay Parmar, Roop Bansal, one of the promoters of the M3M, and others.
So far in the case, the ED had arrested Basant Bansal, Director in M3M India Holdings Private Ltd since 2012, and Pankaj Bansal, Director in M3M India Private Limited from 2011 to April 1, 2023, and Ajay Parmar. They are in judicial custody now.
Sudhir Parmar was posted as a CBI/ED judge in Panchkula on November 18, 2021, while Lalit Goyal, then MD of the IREO group, was arrested by the ED on November 16, 2021.
After that, the ED’s prosecution complaint against Goyal in a case of siphoning off homebuyers’ investments was filed on January 14, 2021, and the ED court took cognisance on January 21, 2022. The ED claims that even after a lapse of 1.5 years, Sudhir Parmar as judge didn’t frame charges against Goyal. “The case has been listed many times, but postponed each time for the disposal of the pending applications of the accused entities/persons,” said the ED, in one of its submissions before a Panchkula court.
As per the WhatsApp chats screenshots provided by a source to the ACB, judge Sudhir Parmar was demanding Rs 5-7 crore for helping out the owners of the M3M and it was claimed in the FIR that Rs 5 crore was paid to Parmar by accused in the IREO case. As per a call recording, Parmar allegedly stated that he had met Lalit Goyal’s wife and brother-in-law Sudhanshu Mittal and had allegedly assured favouring him.
