Kabul Chawlas, BPTP Owners Apartment worth $19.4 Million in trouble

[BlessU]

"WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND"

A person who made people suffer due to non delivery for ages is now facing a similar legal trouble for his MEGA Apartment.

But unfortunately this is all money sucked from unfortunate BPTP Customers.

Kabul Chawla again in news for

https://plus.google.com/+GrooviBhooviBl ... bFJNzLRcD8

JPMorgan Chase has gone to court to prevent an Indian real estate developer from transferring ownership of a $19.4 million condominium at the Time Warner Center in Manhattan, the first step in an effort to seize the apartment as partial payment for a $90 million award.

A major problem is that the real estate developer says he does not own the condo.

The lawsuit, filed after The New York Times wrote about the apartment in February, illustrates the difficulties in untangling the true ownership of real estate bought under the names of secretive shell companies.

The 68th-floor apartment at 25 Columbus Circle is owned by a Delaware shell company with a Singapore address, NYC Real Estate Opportunities.

The Times article tied the apartment to Kabul Chawla, a New Delhi businessman whose company, BPTP, is the target of hundreds of complaints from Indian consumers. They say Mr. Chawla has failed to deliver residential housing projects for which they have paid large deposits.

Neeraj Jagga bought this apartment in a 4,000-unit complex near New Delhi but said construction had barely progressed in three years. The developer, Kabul Chawla, has been the subject of numerous consumer complaints.Towers of Secrecy: Amid Complaints in India, a Real Estate Deal in Manhattan FEB. 9, 2015
Citing the Times article, the lawsuit filed in March by a unit of JPMorgan argued that Mr. Chawla was the true owner of the five-bedroom, five-and-a-half-marble-bath condo, and that he had taken steps to conceal his interest in the property.

A process server delivering legal papers said Mr. Chawla was in the building as recently as April 6. But Mr. Chawla has denied ownership of the apartment, saying his cousin was the actual owner.

A press officer for Mr. Chawla’s company, BPTP, did not respond to requests for comment.

The use of shell companies to buy luxury real estate was the subject of a series in The Times, which found that such companies own two-thirds of the Time Warner Center condos and even greater percentages of apartments at other luxury buildings in Manhattan. Critics of shell company ownership of real estate say that it can render international transactions impossible to trace, as well as make it difficult for creditors or law enforcement officials to pinpoint ownership.

On April 6, after JPMorgan filed suit, Justice Charles E. Ramos of State Supreme Court in Manhattan prohibited the condo’s sale or transfer pending further court proceedings. In doing so, Justice Ramos commented on the use of shell companies.

“It seems to be a custom, part of the European or non-American culture, that wealthy people will own assets under a series of layers and of corporations and companies and anonymous societies, somehow deluding themselves that American courts won’t cut through those layers like a hot knife through butter,” he said during the court hearing.

When a lawyer for Mr. Chawla described him as a mere tenant in the building, Justice Ramos responded, “If you’re going to come in here and represent to me he’s nothing but a tenant, then he has no reason to be concerned at all because I’m not going to evict him.”

An arbitration panel in London had ruled in October that Mr. Chawla’s companies, including the flagship BPTP, owed more than $90 million to a JPMorgan subsidiary, Harbour Victoria Investment Holdings, the result of a business dispute after the bank acquired a 6 percent stake in Mr. Chawla’s company in 2008 and 2009.

Lawyers for JPMorgan complained in court that they have not yet collected on the arbitration panel award and asked Justice Ramos to enforce the award in New York court. Mr. Chawla’s lawyers contended that the $90 million award had been reduced by a settlement in India and that the payment was imminent.

In the meantime, they have asked a federal court to overturn the order blocking the apartment’s transfer. They also say that there are no immediate plans to sell the apartment, that Mr. Chawla has sufficient assets in India to pay the award and that an Indian court has frozen some of his assets in India to guarantee that payment.

The Times connected Mr. Chawla to the building through interviews and documents, including an email exchange among real estate brokers involved in its purchase, who referred to “Kabul.”

When the condo was bought in 2012 for $19.4 million under the name NYC Real Estate Opportunities, the contract identified the purchaser as Mr. Chawla’s cousin, a Dubai hedge fund trader named Aneil Anand.

[webmaster]

Thanks for the update Groovi.

[umesh.prabhakar1965@rediffmail.com]

http://realty.economictimes.indiatimes. ... d/47108824