Netherlands Airline Company Taken For A Ride By Mumbai Firm! Director Held For ₹4.5 Crore Fraud

Mumbai: The Mumbai police Economic Offences Wing( EOW) arrested a director of a Mumbai-based transportation company on Wednesday for defrauding the owner of a Netherlands airline company of 45 million rupees. Amit Agarwal, the director of Supreme Transport Organization Private Limited, has been arrested. Other directors of the company have also been charged in connection with the case.

According to EOW, in this case, Vishal Shukla, the representative of Michel Nefel, President and CEO of the Netherlands company Track Air BV, filed a complaint. The complainant company deals in the buying and selling of aircraft and also repairs crashed aircraft. In 2018, an aircraft belonging to Supreme Transport Organization Private Limited crashed at the Ganganagar Airport in Rajasthan. At that time, the complainant company contacted the director, Amit Agarwal, and inquired about the sale of the aircraft. Agarwal agreed to sell the aircraft and also cancelled its Indian registration.

On July 20, 2022, a purchase agreement was signed for the sale of the aircraft for five and a half million US dollars (approximately Rs4.5 crore). Accordingly, five and a half crore US dollars were deposited in the bank account opened by both companies. However, there was a legal dispute regarding this aircraft before the National Company Law Tribunal. At that time, the court had ordered not to sell the aircraft before the decision. However, it has been alleged in the complaint that the Netherlands company was kept in the dark about the entire dispute.

Amit Agarwal told them that he wanted to pay the fees for the aircraft at Jaipur Airport and also sent a receipt for it. Then, in January 2023, Nifel transferred 60,000 US dollars to the account of Supreme Transport Organization Private Limited. The aircraft was loaded into a container and dispatched to a port in Gujarat. At that time, Agarwal instructed to deposit the remaining 4 lakh 90 thousand US dollars into his uncle's company's bank account in London.

On May 4, 2023, Nifel received an email from the bank. It stated that the aircraft's owning company had taken a loan of 12.50 crores from the bank to purchase the plane. The bank informed that there is an outstanding amount of 10.49 crores.

The email also stated that they have approached the DRT (Debt Recovery Tribunal) court in Mumbai for the recovery of the loan amount and mentioned that the bank is in the process of taking possession of the aircraft. Meanwhile, other directors of Supreme Transport Organization Private Limited approached the NCLT court in Mumbai, stating that Amit Agarwal had sold the company's aircraft in violation of the court's orders. Subsequently, the court directed the customs department to prevent the aircraft from leaving the country.

When Agarwal was contacted about this, he refused to pay the amount and said that he would have to wait for the court's decision. Following this, a complaint was lodged by Michel Nifel with the Economic Offenses Wing. The case has been registered under sections 420, 409, 465, 467, 468, 461, and 34 of the IPC.