A company linked to AAP MP from Punjab Sanjeev Arora and some other entities caused "loss" to the state government and generated "huge" proceeds of crime by misusing industrial lands for residential projects, the Enforcement Directorate(ED) alleged Wednesday.
The federal agency had raided the premises of Arora, also a businessman, that of a company promoted by him -- Hampton Sky Reality (erstwhile Ritesh Properties Industries Limited or RPIL) -- and others like Hemant Sood and Chander Shekhar Aggarwal on October 7 in Ludhiana, Chandigarh, Jalandhar, Delhi and Gurugram.
It also raided another company named Royal Industries Ltd (RIL), and its directors Gurmeet Singh and Pardeep Kumar Aggarwal on the same day.
The federal agency said in a statement that it seized "incriminating" documents, mobile phones and digital devices during these searches.
Arora, on the day the raids took place, had said he was a "law abiding" citizen and he was not sure about the reason for which the searches were conducted. "I will cooperate fully with agencies and make sure all their queries are answered," he had said in a social media post.
Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) national convener and former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal had said the ED action was a "politically motivated attack by the Modi government".
The money laundering case stems from a criminal complaint filed in a Ludhiana court, under various sections of the IPC, against RPIL and an FIR registered by Ludhiana Police against RIL.
The ED claimed its probe found that RPIL and RIL were allotted industrial lands by the Punjab government with an objective to promote industries in the state on certain conditions.
