ED arrests IREO MD Lalit Goyal in money laundering case

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has arrested real estate firm IREO's owner and Managing Director Lalit Goyal in a money laundering case, the news PTI reported on Tuesday. He was arrested in a case linked to the alleged bribery of a now-suspended special judge based in Panchkula. Goyal was taken into custody by the central probe agency under the criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) from Gurugram.

The ED is likely to produce him before a special court on Wednesday. The money laundering case is based on an FIR filed by the Haryana Police's Anti-Corruption Bureau in April against former special CBI-ED judge Sudhir Parmar, who was posted in Panchkula, his nephew Ajay Parmar, and Roop Kumar Bansal, the promoter of another realty group M3M, and others.

This is the fourth arrest made by the agency in this case in less than a month. The ED has arrested Ajay Parmar, the nephew of Sudhir Parmar, and two directors and 'key managerial persons' of the M3M group-- Basant Bansal and Pankaj Bansal.

According to the ACB FIR, the ED said reliable information was received that Parmar was showing "favouritism" to the accused, namely Roop Kumar Bansal, his brother Basant Bansal and IREO's Lalit Goyal in the criminal cases of the agency and other cases of the CBI pending against them in his court. Goyal was arrested by the ED in 2021 in another money laundering probe.