Malvinder Singh arrested by Enforcement Directorate, leaving questions unanswered

Well, the Bollywood'ish financial fraud drama involving the Singh brothers and their relative, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, has taken another turn -- with more curves in the legal road seemingly lying ahead.

A story in The Economic Times (below) says that India's Enforcement Directorate has just arrested Malvinder Singh and Sunil Godhwani, who previously was the guru's right hand man and personal financial adviser. 

Previously Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, along with Godhwani, had been arrested by the Economic Offenses Wing (EOW) of the Delhi police. So now they've been re-arrested by an organization that investigates money laundering and other illegal financial acts.

It sounds from the story that one purpose of the new arrests is "custodial interrogation." This makes sense, since there are important questions remaining to be answered in this case.

(1) Malvinder has told the High Court of Delhi that the $500 million or so owed by the Singh brothers in a settlement related to the sale of their pharmaceutical firm, Ranbaxy, resides in 55 entities (people and shell companies), including the Dhillon family. The High Court had ordered these entities to repay the money. A High Court hearing was supposed to be held today on this. So far there's no word if it happened. If it didn't, why not?

(2) The story below says that money went to various persons, then siphoned off. Previously progress seems to have been made on tracing the money flows. Likely this will continue under the Enforcement Directorate. Pretty clearly, Malvinder and Godhwani didn't engage in fraud for their own benefit, since the money didn't end up with them.

So it's important to learn who ended up with the money, and who orchestrated the financial fraud. Malvinder's lawyer has called for the arrest of the RSSB guru. Reportedly Dhillon, his family, and close associates ended up with most of the illegally siphoned money.

(3) Why is it taking so long for this case to be resolved? Yes, it is complex, involving numerous people, corporations, shell companies, and investigative organizations. But it sure seems like skilled forensic accountants could have figured out the money flows by now, since some details of the financial fraud activity have been reported in the Indian financial press.

I'm wondering how cooperative some central actors in the fraud have been, notably Sunil Godhwani. Given his close connections to the RSSB guru, is he refusing to testify about his role in the fraud, who orchestrated it, and why it was committed?

Here's today's The Economic Times story. 

The ED on Thursday arrested former Fortis HealthcareNSE -0.35 %promoter Malvinder Singh and former CMD of Religare Enterprises Ltd (REL) Sunil Godhwani in a money-laundering case related to alleged misappropriation of funds of Religare Finvest Ltd (RFL).

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) took both the accused in its custody inside the Tihar central jail here, where they are currently lodged in a case filed by the Delhi Police in relation to the alleged scam.

A court here was informed about the development by the agency's lawyer, Nitesh Rana, who urged it to issue a production warrant against the accused for seeking their custodial interrogation.

The court, however, directed that the accused be produced before a metropolitan magistrate in the central jail itself since trial prisoners are not being produced in the Saket District Court, either physically or through video-conference, due to the ongoing lawyers' strike.

"The court is informed that accused Malvinder Mohan Singh and Sunil Godhwani are lodged in central jail numbers 8 and 7 respectively at Tihar Jail. Accordingly, the applications filed by the ED be put up before the concerned duty MM, Tihar jail tomorrow, i.e, November 15, for disposal in accordance with law," Special Judge Sandeep Yadav said.

Both Singh and Godhwani are accused of laundering money, punishable under sections 3 and 4 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, the ED said.

They were in judicial custody along with Singh's brother Shivinder and two others -- Kavi Arora and Anil Saxena -- in a case filed by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Delhi Police.

RFL is a group firm of REL, which was earlier promoted by the Singh brothers.

According to the ED, both the accused, along with others, transferred an amount of approximately Rs 1,000 crore to various persons from entities linked to the corporate loan book and finally, the money was siphoned off.

The agency started its investigation in the matter on the basis of a case lodged by the Delhi Police.

Malvinder (46), Shivinder (44), Godhwani (58), Arora (48) and Saxena were arrested by the Delhi Police's EOW for allegedly diverting the money and investing in other companies.

The EOW registered an FIR in March after it received a complaint from RFL's Manpreet Suri against Shivinder, Godhwani and others, alleging that loans were taken by them while managing the firm but the money was invested in other companies.

"They put RFL in a poor financial condition by disbursing loans to companies with no financial standing and controlled by them. The companies to which the loans were disbursed willfully defaulted in repayments and caused a loss to RFL to the tune of Rs 2,397 crore," the police had alleged.

Comments

[Maria de La Torre]

More delays, the next hearing will be February 5! Will post link anon.....

[Neon]

Nooooo!! Means I have to go to more satsangs!

[Anon]

How is not clear that Malvinder is the culprit in this whole scam?
1. He concealed information from Daichi that backfired.
2. He misappropriated funds at religare
3. He misappropriated funds at fortis
4. He apparently is part of some money laundering scheme.
5. He has been arrested twice now.
Clearly the commenters here (the ones with some vendetta against RSSB) would love to learn that the guru was behind all this but sorry guys(Brian,Jessie,JS,neon,Spence). Sorry to burst your bubble he was not involved. Get your hands on that 74 page affidavit submitted 2 days ago so you can have a clearer picture.

[Anon]

Oh I forgot one more fun fact about MMS

6. He absconded the arrest and was found In Ludhiana.

[Jesse]

"he was not involved"

If he's not involved why is he, and not you or I or Brian, being summoned to court?

[Anon]

If he's not involved why is he, and not you or I or Brian, being summoned to court?

Posted by: Jesse | November 14, 2019 at 02:35 PM

Cant speak for you or Brian but I’m not related to them and have never dealt with them in any capacity. Involvement does not mean wrongdoing.

[Spence Tepper]

Anon
If a thief, perhaps your own brother, steals a car and on Christmas day presents it to you as a gift, so long as you know nothing of the theft, you are innocent.

Now the High Court sends police to your home investigating the theft.

And you say "I have taken nothing from my brother."

In that instant you have become an accomplice.

Then, the police see you driving the car and pull you over. They check the vehicle and sure enough it is stolen.

You refuse to give it back. You insist it was a gift, knowing now it was stolen.

Now you are guilty of obstructing justice, you have been harboring stolen goods all this time, and you lied about it to the court earlier.

You didn't commit the first crime. Or maybe you did. Your simple minded brother adores you, but he was always a thief. So when he shows up with a fabulous new car, shouldn't you be suspicious? Ah he heard you speaking about your love for that car! And now you can't let it go.

Sad. I can't put words to it. Anger, yes, but under anger, incredible grief.

Today I lost Baba Ji.

But he was never really here.

[Jesse]

"Involvement does not mean wrongdoing. "

You just said he isn't involved. Now you're changing it to he did no wrong.

Make up your mind.

He was obviously involved. He is, according to the standards of his own cult, guilty of being greedy and not a sant sat purush param guru maharaj or whatever title he uses now. According to the standards of worldly laws, we've yet to get the verdict. But he's involved.

[liberatetheguru]

Spence,

You didn't lose Baba Ji. You lost your gullibility.

For far too long we have projected onto others what we think they should be or act.

The guru game is a projective one and says more about our own needs than anything ontologically about them.

The guru game is up and yet it liberates us in the process.

Rationality supervene myth.

We just have to grow up and do the hard work on ourselves and say, "how shall I live up to MY own
ideals or lofty goals?"

Baba Ji has his own problems and should have stayed home with his kids and played soccer and
given up the "get me more cash" gig at first light but he didn't and thus his "honest living" tome is going to
bite him in the posterior.

Imagine what Malvinder and Shivinder's mother must feel.... so sad, so tragic, but so, so, so UNNECESSARY.

How much is enough?

Shabd not sufficient?

[Mike England]

M: I’ve been arrested
S: What!!??? Again???!!!
SG: Harumph

GSD: lol

[Whodunit]

Baba ji had no choice
Neither do you or I or Spence apart from facing up to the immediate reality.
I'm pretty sure if Gurinder or Charan or Jagat or perhaps even Sawan had a choice they would not have adopted the mantle of guruship voluntarily.

I'm pretty sure I would have run a mile
I wonder what any here would have done under the same circumstances.

[Anon]

Jesse my English may not be as superb as yours so pardon me. I mean he is not involved in wrongdoing as much as most of you here would like to believe.
The rest you can judge by your own standards I stand by my Guru and the teachings he has imparted on me.

[Jesse]

"Spence,

You didn't lose Baba Ji. You lost your gullibility. "

You'll know if this is true when he stops consulting his imaginary internal Gurinder, and when he stops publicly asking how we can all pay back the debts we have nothing to do with to help a conman none of us have ever really met.

Gullibility is what led all of us into having any non-neutral opinion about this drama. None of us should care about it, but because we fell for the cult's teachings, here we are.

[Sevadars_Inc]

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/healthcare/biotech/pharmaceuticals/sc-holds-former-ranbaxy-promoters-malvinder-shivinder-singh-guilty-of-contempt-of-court/articleshow/72067186.cms

[guru]

i dont know, why people make fuss about Gurinder Singh. Just visit dera once and satsang Ghars, you will realize about where money being transitioned into. Dera is a non profitable org.

[Dd]

In my point to view he is not true guru.. He played with humans emotions n made of fool of them..
I n follower of radha swami for more than 30 years n now I felt I got cheated not bcs of this singh brother case but my personal experience.