The Enforcement Directorate on Friday conducted searches at the residence of Punjab MLA and minister Sanjeev Arora, along with premises linked to his associates Hemanth Sood and Chandrasekhar Aggarwal, under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA).
Raids were also carried out at multiple locations in Gurugram, Chandigarh, Ludhiana and Jalandhar.
Reacting to the raids, Arora on X said, "Good Morning! An action by the Enforcement Directorate took place at my premises. As a responsible citizen, I will fully cooperate with the agencies and I am confident that the truth will prevail."
What Is The Case?
According to the official, Sanjeev Arora is the promoter of Hampton Sky Realty Ltd (formerly Ritesh Properties and Industries Ltd), which is into large-scale real estate and infra projects in Punjab.
His son, Kavya Arora, is presently the MD of the company and is also being searched. Sanjeev Arora's company is under scanner for multiple irregularities such as illegal change of land use in Punjab, booking fraudulent and over-inflated sales to inflate share prices, insider trading scams in the stock market, roundtripping of ill-got funds and illegal betting money from the United Arab Emirates to India.
His business partner Hemanth Sood runs a financial investment and stockbroker company, Findoc Finvest Private Limited, in Ludhiana, Gurgaon and Gujarat GIFT city. He partnered with Sanjeev Arora and assisted him in the round-tripping of his ill-got funds from the UAE and also in generating proceeds of crime from insider trading. Hemant Sood is also alleged to have assisted many more betting operators and hawala operators in laundering the crime money and round-tripping the same into India through the Foreign Portfolio Investment (FPI) route.
Another business partner Chandrasekhar Aggarwal, a Jalandhar-based businessman, originally started as a cricket bookie and later expanded his operations to hawala operations and started a bookie and betting platform by the name Khiladi Book and cheated thousands of poor people through betting platforms. His crime proceeds generated and parked in the UAE have also been brought back into India through Findoc and invested in real estate through Sanjeev Arora.
This came few days after ED conducted raids at AAP MP Ashok Mittal's House and his educational institution Lovely Professional University over FEMA case.
Bhagwant Mann, Arving Kejriwal Slam
Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on the ED conducting a search at the residence of Punjab MLA and Minister Sanjeev Arora said that the Bharatiya Janata Party had started preparation for the 2027 assembly elections.
The Punjab CM said, " Recently, the ED raided the house of our Rajya Sabha MP Ashok Mittal... Today, ED is raiding the house of Sanjeev Arora... He had defeated the BJP here in the by-election... The BJP has started preparations for the 2027 assembly elections... BJP is not getting 117 people to contest the elections... Democracy is being murdered... Only non-BJP governments are being implicated..."
Meanwhile, AAP National Convenor Arvind Kejriwal questioned the Centree over multiple raids conducted at AAP MP's house and offices.
In a post on X, he said, "This is the second ED raid at the residence of an Aam Aadmi Party leader in three days. Will the Prime Minister tell us how much black money has been recovered from the countless raids conducted so far at the homes of 'AAP' leaders? Has even a single rupee been found? The entire country is watching how petty politics you are playing just for the sake of power."
Author : Sneha