NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate is expected to soon charge a Gurugram-based real estate company and its promoters in a multi-crore money laundering probe in connection with alleged irregularities in the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna (PMAY) and homebuyer fraud, official sources said on Sunday.Swaraj Singh Yadav, the MD and “key person” of the company called Ocean Seven Buildtech Pvt. Ltd. (OSBPL), was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on November 13 and is currently in jail under judicial custody.
The ED has alleged that Yadav fraudulently diverted and laundered homebuyers’ funds worth Rs 222 crore collected under PMAY through cancellation and resale of units at inflated prices, collecting significant cash premiums and diverting Escrow proceeds to ‘shell’ (dummy) entities.
The PMAY aims to provide housing to the economically weaker sections as part of the Union government’s ambitious plan to ensure ‘home for all’. The agency, sources said, is conducting an exercise for valuation of the assets of the company and its promoters so that they can possibly be seized under the Anti-Money Laundering Act and later refunded to the victims of the alleged fraud.
A case is also expected to be filed against Yadav and his associated entities soon, the sources said.
There was no immediate response from the company on the ED’s allegations against the company and its MD.
The agency had claimed to have found a ‘pattern of accelerated liquidation’ of personal and proprietary assets by Yadav in Gurugram, Maharashtra and Rajasthan in the recent past to convert ‘illicit’ profits into easily disposable forms.
The ED told a court and in a public statement that Yadav’s wife Sunita Swaraj ‘moved’ to the US in August 2025 and was found at Harvard University in Boston in Massachusetts, while his children (a son and a daughter) were studying at Trinity College in Connecticut.
“…such accelerated sales indicate a clear attempt to offload assets and evade legal action,” the ED alleged.
The agency also uncovered an alleged modus operandi deployed by Yadav to generate illegal funds by “cancelling” allotments of flats under PMAY under “false” pretexts and reselling the same units at higher prices without refunding earlier payments, thereby collecting double proceeds.
Yadav, the ED said, also controlled premium collection in cash, in addition to the money received through banking channels on such resales.
“A similar cash-driven mechanism was followed in car park sales where only a nominal amount was routed through the company’s bank and the remaining premium was collected in cash as per his instructions.
“These actions are part of a larger investigation into the misuse of escrow funds and other violations cited in multiple FIRs for predicate offences,” the ED said.
The ED found that the price of one PMAY flat was Rs 26.5 lakh, but the eligible homebuyer’s allotment was canceled on the pretext of non-payment and subsequently resold at a price ranging from Rs 40-50 lakh.
“This resale process was carried out without refunding the amount paid by the previous customer, resulting in collection of duplicate payments against the same unit (house),” the ED found.
The agency also found that Yadav had transferred a ‘huge’ amount to the US through a bank account opened in his wife’s name through ‘hawala’ transactions.
Yadav’s legal team told a Delhi court during his remand proceedings in November that majority of the FIRs relied on by the ED to file a money laundering case against their client have been “resolved”.
The bench of Additional Sessions Judge (Patiala House Courts) Shefali Barnala Tandon subsequently rejected Yadav’s plea to quash his arrest and on November 14 approved ED’s request for his 14-day custody. He was later sent to judicial custody.
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