Chandigarh, April 17: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) launched a series of raids on the residences and business locations of Punjab Cabinet Minister Sanjeev Arora and his associates, Hemant Sood and Chandrashekhar Agarwal, on Friday. The ED’s team conducted simultaneous searches in Ludhiana, Jalandhar, and several other locations, targeting the homes and offices of the minister and his partners.
According to sources, this investigation is linked to a significant real estate and financial network. Sanjeev Arora is the promoter of Hampton Sky Realty Limited (formerly Ritesh Properties and Industries Limited), a company engaged in extensive real estate and infrastructure projects in Punjab. His son, Kavya Arora, currently serves as the company’s Managing Director, and searches were also conducted at his premises.
Sanjeev Arora’s company is suspected of various irregularities, including illegal land use changes in Punjab, inflating sales figures to manipulate share prices, insider trading scandals, and round-tripping of funds earned through illegal activities and betting from the UAE back to India.
Hemant Sood operates a financial investment and stock brokerage firm named Findok Finvest Private Limited in Ludhiana, Gurgaon, and Gujarat International Finance Tec-City. He partnered with Sanjeev Arora and allegedly assisted in round-tripping funds earned illegally from the UAE, as well as laundering money obtained through insider trading. Sood is also accused of helping several other gamblers and hawala operators clean crime proceeds through money laundering and bringing them back to India via the Foreign Portfolio Investor (FPI) route.
Chandrashekhar Agarwal, a businessman from Jalandhar, initially started as a cricket bookie and later expanded into hawala operations. He launched a betting platform called “Khiladi Book,” defrauding thousands of impoverished individuals through these gambling platforms. The money he earned from crime, which was deposited in the UAE, was also funneled back to India through Findok and invested in real estate via Sanjeev Arora.
Sanjeev Arora is suspected of using his political influence to provide protection to illegal gamblers in Punjab to share in their profits. Additionally, he allegedly facilitated the legitimization of unaccounted money through his companies and various entry operators, actively aiding in money laundering.
There are also suspicions regarding Sanjeev Arora’s companies creating fake export bills, round-tripping money from the UAE, and showing fictitious purchases from GST entities that do not actually exist.
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