Jalandhar, July 15 -- : Financial transactions in the Rs.102.5-crore money laundering case linked to jailed Punjab minister Sanjeev Arora were routed through WhatsApp groups using coded expressions, a prosecution complaint filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has revealed. According to a 29-page extract submitted with the main chargesheet (accessed by HT) in a special PMLA court in Gurugram on July 6, phrases like "1.5 kg" and "2 kg" were routinely deployed as code words to facilitate cash deliveries of Rs.1.5 crore and Rs.2 crore, respectively. The federal agency claimed that the investigation revealed a structured and premeditated modus operandi engineered to generate, layer, and integrate proceeds of the crime through a complex network of entities. The recovered WhatsApp chats establish a clandestine, parallel cash component managed by major suppliers of Hampton Sky Realty Ltd (HSRL), a company allegedly linked to Arora and his family members, says the chargesheet. Arora was arrested from his Chandigarh residence on May 9 following raids and is currently in judicial custody, while assets worth Rs.55.57 crore linked to him have been attached. The investigation stems from an April search at the premises of HSRL-formerly known as Ritesh Properties and Industries Limited-which exposed a fictitious mobile phone trade trail. The company recorded sales worth approximately Rs.157.12 crore between May and October 2023, out of which exports worth Rs.102.50 crore were routed to just two UAE-based entities, M/s Fortbel Telecom FZCO and M/s Dragon Global FZCO. An FIR registered at the Udyog Vihar police station in Gurugram names Arora and other beneficial owners, Hemant Sood and Chander Shekhar, who allegedly controlled the Dubai-based recipient entities. Statements recorded under Section 50 of the PMLA from local suppliers established that the firms HSRL supposedly bought high-value Apple iPhones from were merely shell or accommodation-entry concerns. These entities operated with negligible genuine business activity and existed solely to route and layer illicit funds against cash. The ED chargesheet details how the trade-based money laundering scheme was orchestrated across three layers: fabricating domestic procurement trails, manipulating export documentation, and integrating funds via export remittances, GST refunds, and real estate investments. Central to the agency's findings are the documented logistics timelines, which the ED classifies as physically impossible under genuine trading conditions. The chargesheet outlined the operational mechanism: "The scheme involved routing funds through shell and accommodation-entry entities without genuine supply of goods, creating a fictitious and operationally impossible supply chain of mobile phones, inflating export values to claim incentives and GST benefits, and using pre-funded export remittances and group-entity investments to project illicit funds as legitimate business income and capital." To illustrate this, the federal agency highlighted a glaring logistical anomaly in the transit documentation: "More critically, the documented procurement-to-export timelines are physically impossible. In Shipping Bill No. 2595294, 54 units of iPhone 14 were despatched from Karol Bagh at 16:21 hours on July 20, 2023, yet the shipping bill including these units was filed at IGI air cargo at 16:32 hours the same day, allowing only 11 minutes for a journey of more than 20km, receipt at Ghitorni, verification, repacking, and onward movement to the airport. This sequence cannot occur in genuine trade." The ED has quantified the total proceeds of crime at Rs.102.99 crore derived across 43 shipping bills. This sum comprises Rs.86.87 crore in export remittances, Rs.15.63 crore in fraudulent IGST refunds, and Rs.48.53 lakh in duty drawbacks. The ED chargesheet mentioned that the material gathered during investigation further shows that the said UAE entities were not independent third-party buyers in the ordinary course of trade, but were connected or associated entities beneficially owned or controlled through a former associate of the another group, which is a major investor in HSRL. The ED also stated that in his statement Arora's son Kavya recorded that the export business of mobile phones was looked after by his father and that all major decisions relating to procurement, quantity, pricing, supplier selection, and vendor finalisation were taken by him and implemented through company officials. In his statement, Arora told the agency that he had appointed his close associate Sanjeev Walia to exercise operational and financial control over the mobile division of HSRL, claims the chargesheet. The investigation revealed transactional impossibilities and documentary falsities in the purported export chain, the probe agency said in the chargesheet. "Analysis of IMEI data received from Apple India Pvt. Ltd. shows that 123 identical IMEI numbers were declared in two separate shipping bills, No. 1201639 dated 22.05.2023 and shipping bill No. 1453602 dated 01.06.2023, to the same overseas consignee, thereby showing duplicate export declaration of non-existent goods. It has also emerged that 97 Apple phones declared as exported to Dubai were subsequently activated and sold within India after the declared export date, while 58 Apple iPhones declared as "non-activated" at the time of export had already been activated and sold within India before the declared export date. These findings establish that the export declarations were false and that the export leg was used as a device to generate and disguise proceeds of crime", the ED said. Hampton Sky Realty Limited could not be contacted despite repeated attempts. HT's calls to the contact number shown on the website did not elicit any response. At the time of Arora's arrest, the company claimed that it had full faith in the legal process and was cooperating with all the statutory authorities and will continue to do so as all relevant facts, documents and verifiable records will be submitted. The company said it entered the mobile phone export business in May 2023 in line with the Government of India's "Make in India" initiative and the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme. Claiming that its export operations were legitimate, the company stated that it exported 44,471 genuine mobile phones and accessories. It further said that all exports underwent Customs and OEM verification....