Real estate developer IREO Residences Company Pvt Ltd has filed a first information report (FIR) at Police Station, Sector 65, Gurugram on July 21, 2022, alleging its former employee Ramesh Sanka, in connivance with Vivek Sehgal, Sumit Kumar, GharSamadhan LLP and others, have illegally extorted huge amount of money from their customers and home buyers on the pretext of getting them refund of the amounts invested by them in the housing project launched by IREO.
The FIR was lodged against the accused under Sections 384, 389, 406, 409, 417, 420 and 120B of the Indian Penal Code, besides Sections 66, 66B and 72A of the Information Technology Act, 2000.
The complaint further said that Sanka also allegedly used IREO’s confidential information to blackmail it.
As per IREO, Sanka, at the time of his resignation on December 28, 2016, had executed an Employee Separation, Confidentiality, Inventions, Non-Competition and Non-Disparagement Agreement with the company, asking it to pay him Rs 10,37,39,409 by September 30, 2017, for not disclosing the confidential information he had access to.
The accused, in order to make wrongful gains at the cost of IREO, incorporated a Limited Liability Partnership, namely GharSamadhan LLP on January 15, 2020. The LLP was instituted only for extorting money from customers of the company, by misleading them about the actual status of their funds invested for booking plots in the company.
After the complete payment of his severance fee of Rs 10.37 crores, the accused, despite execution of the Agreement dated December 28, 2016 governing the terms of his resignation, Sanka initiated false and frivolous proceedings against various companies incorporated by IREO Fund in India, so as to extort money from them illegally. He also made illegal use of the confidential
information, including the customer data of the company, which he had access to during the course of his employment.
Using the data of the company, Sanka started contacting the company’s clients and convinced them that they should hire his services to file complaints against IREO and others. He also misrepresented to them that the money paid by them for booking plots in the project launched by IREO has been siphoned off and that only Ramesh can recover it for them.
IREO alleged in the complaint that before his severance from the IREO companies, Sanka forwarded various emails containing confidential information and documents, from his official email id to his personal email id. In furtherance of the aforesaid systematic criminal design, he colluded with the Sumit Kumar, Vivek Sehgal, Col Sanjeev Dhawan, Gurinder Singh and other unknown persons.
The accused, in order to make wrongful gains at the cost and expense of IREO, incorporated a Limited Liability Partnership, namely GharSamadhan LLP on January 15, 2020. The LLP was instituted by the accused only for the purpose of extorting money from the customers of IREO by misleading them about the actual status of the funds provided by them to the company for booking plots.
By manipulating the records of IREO, the accused portrayed to their customers that for the recovery of money paid by them to the company, litigations will be instituted on their behalf by GharSamadhan LLP. The accused LLP entered into the Authorisation Agreements with the customers, who were misled to sign such agreements.
By means of Authorisation Agreements executed between the LLP and the customers of IREO, authority was granted to the LLP to initiate/pursue legal proceedings and other remedies against the company for recovery of money paid by the customers. The LLP, vide the Agreement, was allowed to sign, verify and depose on behalf of the customers of the company. The LLP was stated to get success fee equivalent to 35 percent of the interest/penalty component recovered from IREO, pursuant to the proceedings undertaken by them on behalf of the homebuyer.
The homebuyer was further directed to make a payment of Rs 2,36,000 to the LLP for instituting legal proceedings on behalf of the homebuyer against IREO before various forums. It was also assured that at least 2 cases will be filed on each individual customer’s behalf.
Thus, even though no specific proceedings were sought to be instituted by the customer, however, the accused compelled the Clients to institute two sets of proceedings. By means of the aforesaid, the accused furthered their systematic criminal design of extorting money from the IREO Companies.
The complaint also accused Vivek Sehgal, one of the partners in the LLP, of playing an equally important role in in disseminating false information regarding IREO companies and the projects being undertaken by them, thereby misleading the innocent customers into incorrectly believing that their money was being misappropriated. It said Vivek Sehgal was associated with one of the IREO Companies in the past, in capacity of being a channel partner in a project undertaken by IREO Waterfront Pvt. Ltd. (IREO Waterfront) in Ludhiana and he was also allotted a plot in the same project. During 2021, Vivek Sehgal started making several baseless allegations of non-completion of internal roads and electric connection. Thereafter, he sold his plot in IREO Waterfront.
Due to the anti-company activities being undertaken by Sehgal, his channel partner agreement was terminated by IREO Waterfront. Post that, Sehgal got together with Sanka and they incorporated the said LLP with the sole purpose of causing wrongful loss of money as well as repute to various IREO Companies and their directors/ employees.
The accused, in furtherance of their mala fide motives, instigated, coerced and misled various customers of different IREO companies to initiate false and frivolous complaints against the Companies. Acting upon such instigation and coercion, various false complaints were filed by the customers of different projects of IREO Companies with the Economic Offence Wings, Gurugram, Haryana in 2020,