Delhi court reserves order on NRI businessman CC Thampi's plea to travel abroad

New Delhi: A Delhi Court on Friday reserved its order on the plea filed by NRI businessman C.C. Thampi seeking permission to travel abroad for two weeks.

Special CBI Judge Arvind Kumar will pronounce the order later in the day. The court has also directed Thampi to join the investigation.

Thampi, who was arrested in connection with the money laundering case involving businessman Robert Vadra, has sought court's permission to travel abroad for two weeks to the UAE.

Thampi's role surfaced after it was noticed that Sanjay Bhandari along with co-conspirators Robert Vadra and Thampi had evolved a scheme of money laundering by way of transferring the proceeds of crime multiple times from one individual to other to make an investigation of the trial of proceeds of crime arduous and difficult.

From the complaint filed under Black Money Act, it was noticed that the US $ 4.9 million was received on June 13, 2008, in the undisclosed bank accounts of Santech International FZC in Dubai, a company owned by Bhandari. A company Sky Lite Investment was floated in April 2009 by Thampi for the purpose of acquiring immovable assets. No actual business was conducted in this company.

Bhandari identified a property Villa D-44 Palm Jumeriah Dubai to be purchased through Sky Life Investment FZE for Arab Emirates Dirham 8.6 million in November 2009. This transaction did not materialise, but the fact remains that this transaction about the property to be purchased in the name of Sky Lite Investment of Thampi was monitored by Bhandari as the draft MoU for purchase was sent by the buyers to Bhandari and not to Sky Lite Investments.

After this deal did not materialise, Bhandari identified and purchased London property by acquiring a 100 percent share of Vortex Management Holdings, a British Virgin Islands-based company by making payment from the account of Santech International FZC, Bhandari company.

Although the property 12 Bryanston, U.K was legally owned by Bhandari from December 2009 to June 2010 but as per evidence collected it emerged that the property was beneficially owned by Vadra through Thampi.