Show us report on 51 builders’ funds: Buyers

NOIDA: Homebuyers of several delayed projects in Noida took to Twitter on Sunday to demand that the Noida Authority release a report by Currie and Brown, a real estate research agency, on the alleged diversion of funds by 51 builders.
The buyers claimed that the report, released over the latter part of 2017 and 2018, contains crucial information on how the developers diverted finances that they had secured from buyers for other purposes. Repeated calls to several Authority officials on whether they would release the report went unanswered.

Currie and Brown had been engaged by the Authority on November 8, 2017, to trace the finances of 51 builders. The agency found irregularities in the finances of 14 builders, following which a forensic audit was ordered in the first phase in 2018.

The remaining 37 builders were investigated in the next phase. The Noida Authority had also issued notices to builders like Unitech, Logix, 3C Company, Gardenia Aims Developers, Granite Gate, Red Fort Jahangir, Omaxe and Pebbles Prolease, among others.

“The Currie and Brown report is crucial for buyers to pursue their cases in court. We have been requesting that the Noida Authority release the document and bring it out in the public domain. But there has been no response from the Authority over the past few months. We demand that it be published immediately,” said Chitra Sharma, a buyer of Jaypee Wish Town and the main applicant against the builder in the Supreme Court said. Sharma has made multiple posts on the issue on Twitter.

Deepak Abbey, a buyer at Lotus Panache who has been running a hashtag campaign on Twitter, #GharpeCharcha, said that he had approached the Noida Authority for the report multiple times in the past, but to no avail. The Authority, however, has submitted a certified copy of the report with the Economics Offences Wing (EOW) in New Delhi, where the 3C buyers had lodged a complaint.

“The Noida Authority has submitted a certified copy with the EOW. We demand that the same copy be handed over to us. When we approached the Authority, we were told that the builders had requested that their details be not made public. If the report has been prepared with public money, it should rightfully be released as well,” Abbey said.

Abhishek Kumar, president of the Noida Extension Flat Owners’ Welfare Association, said: “Though the Authority has facilitated an investigation and secured the data on builders, it has not been released. We have made multiple requests, and have also written to them, but the requests were not honoured.”