Tainted Pearls Group owned 66 offices in Connaught Place alone, says CBI

Two years after registering a case into the PACL scam, CBI on 9 January arrested Pearls Group CMD Nirmal Singh Bhangoo along with three others in connection with alleged swindling of Rs 47,000 crore from over five crore investors.

Sources in CBI said that the Pearls group operated from the heart of Delhi in Connaught Place with at least 66 offices apart from other offices which were right in front of the offices of CBI, Finance Ministry, RBI and Serious Fraud Investigation Office. 

Speaking on Bhangoo’s connection with some politicians the official said the agency has so far come across only one such transaction between him and any politician. “PACL CMD Bhangoo had bought a farm land from Haryana’s tainted politician Gopal Goyal Kanda,” said the official. 

During its ongoing investigation, the CBI also found about a land of 553 acre in Delhi related to Pearls Group, out of which PACL was planning to use 482 acre under the new land pooling policy. All these properties were in the name of Pearls Group Company Ltd. Apart from this, Bhangoo also had 11.5 acre of land in Rajokari near Gurgaon border.

In its biggest ever fine, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) had on September 23 2015, imposed a penalty of Rs 7,269.5 crore on PACL Ltd and its four directors for illegal and fraudulent mobilisation of funds, saying the company deserves “maximum penalty” for such large-scale duping of the public. The penalty followed another order by SEBI last year, wherein PACL was asked to refund Rs 49,100 crore it had collected through illicit schemes over a 15-year period.

In a crackdown on PACL last month, SEBI attached all assets of the company and its nine promoters and directors for their failure to refund more than Rs 60,000 crore due to investors –the biggest illegal mobilisation of funds. The SEBI case against PACL dates back to 1999, when acting on a complaint, the regulator ordered the company to comply with its Collective Investment Scheme (CIS) regulations.