Plenty of people from all over India have been duped and looted by the Real Estate Development Company, PACL Limited. Over 60 million investors were promised refunds by SEBI India, for their money invested in this Chit fund company. Also, a lot of people have been working tirelessly to expose more facts and figures about the land acquired by PACL limited.
One such report by Chandrashekhar Azad from Punjab has thrown some light upon the unnecessary delay that is being caused to refund the PACL investors. SEBI had initiated the Refund process by inviting refund claims from those investors whose Principal Amount was up to Rs.2, 500. If this lot of investors had still not been refunded despite the fact there is abundant land available with about 250 associate companies of PACL whose land can be auctioned and refunds can be paid, it is not hard to make out how much time will it take to refund the rest of the investors.
Why PACL Refund Process is being delayed?
This particular document by Azad is among the 10,000 other documents that had been submitted to the Honorable Supreme Court of India. The reason why this delay is taking place is explained in the following points:
1. Azad has represented in his document that the land which PACL has collected in the last 7 years i.e. from April 1, 2005 to May 31, 2012 is about 3, 04, 322.17 acres.
2. This number includes the amount of land purchased by PACL for its friends, family members, relatives, associate companies and Board of Directors. In other words, Direct Holding through sale deed (PACL’s own land = 53, 890.68 acres), Holdings through general power of attorney/agreement to sale (2, 14, 939.17 acres) and Holding through Associate Companies (35, 492. 30 acres).
3. The Total Duty paid by PACL to the Government of India for the number of plots allotted to investors is Rs.19, 284. This number is from the year 2002 to 2011. Till 31 -03 – 2014, PACL had allotted plots to about 4.63 crores investors.
4. It can be clearly seen that the land which PACL had purchased in its own name is just about 17.7%, whereas rest of the land was purchased from PACL funds for PACL’s associate companies, members of the management and other senior officials.
5. However, this rest of the land can be taken over by PACL in times of crisis/disputes, according to the Custodian Agreement. The question which arises here is that, if this amount of land was purchased and acquired by PACL group in just 7 years, then what would be the percentage of land acquired by Pearls Group in the past years, whose information and data is still undisclosed.
6. If the Lodha Committee or the Supreme Court orders auction of this land plus the land acquired in the past years is auctioned as well, then all the 60 million duped investors can be refunded.
7. The major concern here is, why the delay? This delay is because of the vested interests of the people of Management, higher officials, senior officials, who also have their respective shares in the land purchased by PACL, and these very people are causing unnecessary delay in the recovery process so that they themselves can use their share of land for as long as they want to use it.