Rs 16,000 cr scam: How Bharana duped banks; who lost and how much revealed here

Bank details and documents forwarded to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) accessed by DNA has revealed that Delhi-based industrialist Hem Singh Bharana (55) duped almost all leading Indian banks in the country. The modus operandi was simple — borrow loans from financial institutes under his flagship company ERA Infra Engineering Ltd (EIEL), default the payments and launder the money. Bharana allegedly duped over 30 lending institutions and nearly 3,000 homebuyers to the tune of Rs 16,000 crore. Bharana’s company EIEL was declared a non-performing asset (NPA) on May 2016.

Bharana was arrested by the Gurugram police on July 14, 2015, in connection with fraud in his real estate projects. However, he was released on bail in September 2015. E-mails, SMS sent to Bharana seeking comments did not elicit any response. A complaint was forwarded to the PMO three years ago, against Bharana, Rekha Bharana director of EIEL, Bijander Singh Chaprana, director of Desert Moon Realtors Pvt. Ltd for cheating banks and homebuyers. They collected money through pre-launches and bought lands and raised heavy loans on those lands. For instance, Adel Landmarks (earlier known as Era Landmarks) raised Rs 2,557 crore via mortgage and another Rs 500 crore from buyers of different projects in Gurugram.

In this way, Bharana fraudulently collected and transferred more than Rs 3,000 crore to EIEL. Bharana allegedly also transferred huge amounts of the siphoned off money to his British Virgin Islands-based company, Peach Glow Holdings.

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By Dipu Rai, DNA India