In a major development in the long-running Goa illegal iron ore mining case, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has provisionally attached movable and immovable assets worth ₹1,023.85 crore under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002. The enforcement action, executed by the ED’s Panaji Zonal Office via an order dated June 19, 2026, is linked to a massive money laundering probe into large-scale illegal iron ore mining involving the Salgaocar (AVS) Group and its corporate associates.
The attached holdings are legally tied to the Estate of the Late Anil Vassudeva Salgaocar—represented through its administratrix Lakshmi Anil Salgaocar—alongside several prominent group entities. These include Salgaocar Mining Industries Pvt. Ltd., Shantilal Khushaldas & Brothers Pvt. Ltd., S. Kantilal & Co. Pvt. Ltd., Salitho Ores Pvt. Ltd., Vertex Newton Projects Pvt. Ltd., and Subarnarekha Port Pvt. Ltd.
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The Multi-Jurisdictional Asset Breakdown
The comprehensive provisional attachment order targets distinct asset classes across both domestic and international boundaries, totaling exactly ₹1,023.85 crore. Under this dynamic freeze mandate, the agency has locked down 99 distinct land and commercial real estate properties situated across India, carrying a calculated baseline value of ₹459.10 crore. Strategically moving across borders, the tracking cell has simultaneously attached 31 luxury international real estate assets located inside Singapore, which carry an estimated market valuation of ₹471.32 crore. Additionally, corporate equity segments have been brought under the PMLA net, resulting in the direct seizure of active shares vested in various Indian companies worth approximately ₹93.42 crore.
The money laundering investigation stems from an initial criminal case registered by the Goa Police CID Crime Branch covering offenses under the Indian Penal Code, the Prevention of Corruption Act, and the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act (MMDR). The central agency’s action is further anchored by landmark Supreme Court judgments delivered in 2014 and 2018, which ruled that all mining operations conducted in Goa after November 22, 2007—pending the formal allocation of fresh lease deeds—lacked lawful authority.
The BVI-China Undervaluing Pipeline
The ED’s forensic accounting loop unmasked a sophisticated cross-border extraction mechanism engineered to siphon public mining profits into anonymous offshore accounts. The fraudulent transnational trade network operated via a continuous lifecycle, beginning with illegal ore extraction where the AVS Group operated ten active mining leases between 2007 and 2012, generating raw domestic crime proceeds calculated at ₹2,492.95 crore through direct extraction and unrecorded sales.
Following extraction, the process shifted to undervalued shell routing, under which the mined iron ore was artificially undervalued on official customs invoices and exported to paper intermediaries—Special Purpose Vehicles—incorporated in the British Virgin Islands (BVI). The pipeline concluded with the China offloading re-route stage, where the BVI shell fronts, acting purely as accounting screens, resold the identical iron ore consignments to commercial buyers in China at full international market rates, generating untaxed offshore trade profits of approximately ₹2,744.89 crore.
Layering and Capital Re-entry
By synthesizing the domestic mining values with the offshore shell trading margins, investigators have pinned the total proceeds of crime in the Salgaocar network at a massive ₹5,237.84 crore. According to the central agency, the illicit capital was systematically layered through a network of SPVs based in the British Virgin Islands and Singapore before being deployed to accumulate the newly attached real estate portfolios abroad.
Furthermore, forensic auditors have established that a significant chunk of the offshore funds was routed back into the Indian financial ecosystem disguised as inbound corporate share capital investments. The ED noted that the post-attachment adjudication process is currently underway, with further cross-border asset tracking expected as teams parse banking transactions and ultimate beneficiary structures tied to the network.
